Romance on the Road in a chapter entitled "Portrayals." The films are listed in order of year of release. See also my list of women's travel romance narratives.
The SheikThough presented as a fable-like romantic adventure, The Sheik was not all that far off the mark even when it was released in 1921, given the real-life adventures in the Arab world of Lady Jane Digby, Isabelle Eberhardt, Emily Keene and Sally Nedrett. This film still has the capacity to fascinate 80 years after its release! Rudolph Valentino's breakthrough movie also powerfully demonstrates how the eroticism of the exotic was recognized eons before the 1980s explosion in female travel sex.
2-DVD set also includes Son of the Sheik.
Love Is a Many-Splendoured ThingBased on a real-life romance between author Han Suyin and a British war correspondent based in Hong Kong. Pretty scenery, and observations on the appeal of the Asian or part-Asian woman to the expatriate. One wonders why her The Mountain Is Young, about an even more important travel romance she engaged in, never became a film ... we do know that Emily Hahn worked briefly on a screenplay for Mountain.
VHS version
Bombay TalkieMemorable scenes of absurd Bollywood stage sets and a chance to see the handsome real-life couple, the splendid Shashi Kapoor and Jennifer Kendal, play the main roles. Early Merchant-Ivory production shows direction the producers would take in continually mining the vein explored by novelist E.M. Forster, of overcoming class, race and age obstacles to following the heart's path.
VHS version
EmmanuelleLandmark for showing female sexuality in Asia and Thailand as a playground for women, too. Emmanuelle, a French diplomats' wife, enjoys airplane sex with a sultry-eyed stranger on the way to join her husband, Jean, in Thailand. Jean encourages her to continue her explorations with European men, European women and Thai kick boxers. The sex scenes fall somewhere between naughty and soft, soft porn.
3-DVD set also includes the two official followups, Emmanuelle 2 and Goodbye Emmanuelle.
Heat and DustGrand exploration of many themes of female travel sex, including how Western women grant equality on Third World men by acknowledging their manliness, and how sexual adventuring by women travelers has coincided with two eras of surging feminism. As Olivia washes the back of her effete husband, Douglas, he says: "They're so transparent. The Indians, all of them. They're like children."
"They look like grownup men to me," Olivia replies. "Certainly the Nawab does." A handsome film with strong undercurrents of sexual tension.
VHS version
A Passage to India
A pair of Englishwomen newly arrived in India, Mrs. Moore (Peggy Ashcroft) and Miss Adela Quested (Judy Davis) find themself more open than other colonials to friendship with local people, much like Olivia in Heat and Dust. Epitome of the school of thought that travel sex equals danger and that Eastern sensuality unhinges the Western rationalist. The closing courtroom scene proves quite entertaining.
VHS version
A Room with a View
Shares the same author (Forster) as A Passage to India, and a complex relationship to
Heat and Dust by Forster revisionist heir Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. This trio of films proved quite popular, with Room the most jubilant, and illustrating the sensual centrality of pagan Italy to the awakening of the Western woman.
VHS version
Echoes of Paradise
This Australian film describes, with soap opera depth, an unfulfilled wife and her Balinese lover. Slow moving and predictable, the film at least documented the availability of beach boys in tourist Asia at an early date (1987).
Shirley Valentine
Highly entertaining look, full of insight and frankness, at a British housewife who deliberate hives off to Greece for vacation carousing. Interesting contrast in terms of the female protagonist's deliberate decision to engage in sex travel to How Stella Got Her Groove Back -- wherein Stella stumbles into her vacation relationship.
The Sheltering Sky
Akin to A Passage to India in its look at exotic sex as deranging. The most beautiful of the films in this list, thanks to the sure eye of director Bernardo Bertulucci, and perhaps the most exciting, in its sex scene involving Kit and the Taureg Belqassim, who displays sexual joy during their union.
VHS version
A Winter Tan
Harrowing adaptation of Maryse Holder's book of letters, Give Sorrow Words, describing destructive travel sex in Mexico. Commendable for bringing narrative sense to Holder's life, although actress Jackie Burroughs seems too attractive to be beset by the demons that clawed onto Holder.
Before Sunrise
The college quickie in Europe, distilled perfectly with telling dialogue -- this film comes closest to depicting straightforward romance on the road as practiced by probably 90 percent of travelers.
VHS version
The Lover
Marguerite Duras's novel comes to film with the sultryness of steamy Viet Nam. The story is based on Duras's real-life adolescent affair with an unattractive Chinese businessman's son, which she pursued to help her dirt-poor expatriate family. The film makes him at least physically more appealing, as part of a lush and beautiful production.
VHS version
The Lunatic
Rambunctious, winning, bawdy and comic mating of a heavyset German tourist named Inga and the winsome Aloysius, considered the village idiot of his corner of Jamaica but capable of some sturdy lovin' when called upon. Deserves to be far better known!
The Old Lady Who Walked in the Sea
Jeanne Moreau in an utterly intriguing look at how the older woman can engineer one last hurrah; set in the bright Caribbean, the target of her affection is Lambert, a young hunky blond Frenchman. Much witty dialogue, and Moreau shines.
Barcelona
Whit Stillman directs this stylish tale of an American businessman, Ted Boynton (Taylor Nichols), living in Barcelona and looking for the girl of his dreams. He tells his visiting cousin, Fred (Christopher Eigeman):
The sexual revolution reached Spain much later than the U.S. ... here in Barcelona everything was swept aside. ... Spanish girls tend to be really promiscuous. I wasn't using promiscuous pejoratively. It's just a fact they have completely different attitude toward sex.Barcelona touches on how the North American expatriate can enjoy greater sexual adventurousness in much of Europe.
VHS version
How Stella Got Her Groove BackYuppie brand names and product placements almost take over some of the interior shots, but its flaws aside, this movie did the most to heighten consciousness that female romance tourism even exists, at least in North America.
VHS version
Hideous KinkyBilal, a Moroccan acrobat, falls in love with the character played by Kate Winslet, and complications arise that will be familiar to some Western women travelers. A winning effort, with North Africa coming across as a place of wonder, whether seen through the eyes of a child (as occurs here) or an adult. Moments of sweet intimacy between Bilal and his lover.
VHS version
Under the Tuscan SunBriefly significant byplay between Frances (Diane Lane), who impulsively buys a villa in Tuscany, and her Positano-based lover on stereotypes involving American women and Italian men, but this visually satisfying film is marred by truly incongruous profanity. Tuscan Sun will also puzzle readers of the book version, because the film borrowed a substantially unrelated plot from unacknowledged sources, including perhaps Marlena de Blasi's wondrous book A Thousand Days in Venice and the far superior film
Bread and Tulips, about an Italian woman who strays to Venice, abandoning her unappreciative family.
VHS versionKissed by a Crocodile
From the director's Web site:
Love and sex in Bali - from genuine love relationships between western women and Balinese men, to gigolo affairs and the 'crocodile' Mafia of Kuta's infamous nightclub district (scene of the October 2002 terrorist bombings).An entertaining travel tale of a young Australian film-maker unmasking Bali's biggest taboo, skilfully interwined with a frank account from Indonesians and expats on how western tourism is changing the face of Bali and the traditional family culture of the Balinese.
Heading SouthThe most important contemporary look at female sex tourism, which I discuss here.
