( Note: This conversation contains spoilers.)

Gabriel Shanks: YOUNG ADAM is a salacious, raunchy, sex-soaked romp...NOT. You know, before we get into the movie, I want to get into the politics of the NC-17 rating.

JC: I think we have to..

WHO:	Mixed Reviewers Jill Cozzi and Gabriel Shanks
WHAT:	A meeting-of-the-minds over a steaming hot cup of New York's finest
HOW:	Sugar-free vanilla breve lattes
WHERE:	Starbucks on Columbus Avenue

GS: I think that there's something seriously out of whack with the ratings system in this country, and I think everyone sort of knows it, but no one does anything about it.

JC: Well, nobody does anything about it, and I don't think anybody's going to do anything about it, because we seem to be embarking on a time in which the only measure of what constitutes a stronger rating seems to be sexual content, and it has to do with amount of sexual content, rather than context.

GS: But not even amount...because compared to teen films like American Pie, there's less actual sex in YOUNG ADAM than there is in some of those. What seems to get banned is complex or sophisticated sexual situations. As long as it's dumb teen sex farce...

JC: ...as long as it's NOT in the service of the story, it's OK. As soon as it becomes sex in the service of the story, in a situation that requires some thought, among adults, then it has to be banned.

GS: Right.

JC: Now I have less of a problem with the idea that some material may just be too complex for certain audiences, but that's not what the implication of the NC-17 rating is. I would almost rather see these films released unrated.

GS: I would rather they be unrated. What teenagers, and young adults, and not-so-young adults need to see is less of the R-rated blockbuster sex, and more films like YOUNG ADAM and The Dreamers. You know, it's not porn. These films aren't even close to porn.

JC: What it is, though...it is sex in context and sex with consequences, as opposed to just "Here it is."

GS: Right. Sex not only in service to the narrative but sex as the narrative. Here in YOUNG ADAM, we're following these four main characters and the way that sex transforms all aspects of their lives.

JC: ...and is used as a weapon by everyone in the story.

GS: Not the Peter Mullan character.

JC: Right...well, the implication is that he's not able to.

GS: He's impotent.

JC: But among everybody else, it's used as a weapon. The Tilda Swinton character, Ella, obviously used sex as a weapon to snag Les [Peter Mullan] in the first place, since it's her barge, and when he can't perform, she uses her own sort of -- so-called "allure" as a weapon to snag Joe, and then uses it to keep him -- including paying him off -- the scene where she's still paying him his wages after they're supposedly together indicates a kind of off-kilter power balance here.God knows Joe, Ewan McGregor's character, uses sex as a weapon, and so does the Emily Mortimer use sex as a weapon to try to get him back by telling him she's pregnant. So they all use sex as a weapon in this movie.

GS: I'm going to have to disagree with you. I think they all use sex as a tool to get what they want, but I don't think they use it as a weapon to hurt one another. One of the things I find really interesting is that the women in this film are very sexually realized...you know, they are not merely virgins or whores; they are well-rounded women with a complex sexuality. And the men, with the exception of Ewan McGregor, are really NOT fully realized sexual beings. They are stunted in a lot of sexual ways. Yet even with the women having the complex lives, they still are powerless to stop these things from happening. They are still at the mercy of some kind of...

JC: A biological imperative?

GS: No, a romantic notion...that even though they have a complex sexuality, that sexuality still leaves a hole in their lives.

JC: And it still has to be ... they still have to take these purely sexual relationships and turn them into the context of a long-term relationship. In other words, Joe is the stud and the guy she's fucking -- until the husband leaves, and then he steps into the role of "Oh, we're going to be married." She's trying to fit him into that same role. The Emily Mortimer character -- it's implied pretty strongly from the beginning that she knows what she's got with him, but even so -- when he wants to be a writer and she's out there earning a living and he stays home to write -- but he doesn't -- it just isn't enough for her.

GS: There's something really revealing in these women who cannot break the pattern, even though they have all the tools to do so.

JC: They're not financially dependent...

GS: They're not dumb women, and yet they still fall into these patterns. And Ewan McGregor is sort of the Lothario/enabler, as much as a Scottish guy on a barge who has a depressive streak can be.

I don't know; I kind of liked the film. I think it's a little ponderous, but (the director) McKenzie has a real gritty lyricism. There's something really beautiful about the way the camera captures these barges and captures this world. At the beginning of the movie, when a dead girl floats to the top of the water -- I immediately thought of Laura Palmer in Twin Peaks.

JC: And the music is clearly influenced by Angelo Badalamenti's score for Twin Peaks. There are places in here where it's sort of like he's bringing in that score and he tosses in a little Phillip Glass and it doesn't sound like David Byrne at all. But what's interesting is that everything starts out dirty -- it starts out as the dirtiest movie you've ever seen, and I mean that in the sense of dirt. Ewan McGregor's dirty hand. The dirt on the girl's behind as they fish her out of the water. Because they're obviously on some kind of coal -- it's obviously a coal town. Everything is gritty --

GS: Blue collar...

JC: The sky is gray, everything is gray -- and then you contrast that later on when the relationships start to roil under the surface -- and all of a sudden the barge is out in the countryside with all this lush greenery, and this beautiful blue water, and -- so there's a juxtaposition between the grey grittiness where everyone is dirty, and then this countryside -- and then you have the scenes inside the barge which are lit like a Rembrandt painting.

GS: Don't you get the sense that the appearance of this dead woman rejuvenates their sex lives? It becomes a catalyst for passion in Peter Mullan's character, in Ewan McGregor's character, in Tilda Swinton's character. Reluctantly, this very odd, disjointing event -- finding a dead body in the river -- awakens a lot of things in this cold, gritty landscape.

JC: It's very Russian in that sense, in that sex and death are so closely intertwined.

GS: Well, and like a lot of Russian drama, it's kind of heavy on the metaphors.

JC: It's downright sledgehammerish with the metaphors. The barges going through tunnels...

GS: Broken glass...there are a lot of images that you don't have to look very hard to figure out what they mean. With the barges, there is something really beautifully poetic about the inevitability of going down the river...the inexorability...I think that metaphor really worked. I mean, we have to progress through our lives. I thought there was something poetic about that.

JC: I would agree. As I said to the ticket taker at the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas when he asked if I liked it, I said "Liked isn't exactly the word." This is the kind of movie that you don't go to to be entertained. It's not driven by character, because the characters aren't fully fleshed-out, though certain of their motivations are, but in terms of just a very artistic-looking film that raises some interesting questions about human nature...about conscience and decency...

GS: The ideas really drive it. But you also don't go to this film for fun. I mean, if you want entertainment, you should go down to the megaplex where Kill Bill is playing, or something like that. But even with all the scandal about the NC-17, you also don't go to this film to be titillated. This is a film that has a lot of nudity, but not a lot of eroticism. It has a lot of sexuality, without a lot of passion.

JC: And the sex is kind of joyless...

GS: ....and needy...and clinging, and it is not beautiful sex. It is not soft-core, it's not soap opera...it's not movie sex.

JC: It's gritty and it's ugly and it's needy and it's driven by --

GS: ...and it's not very grandiose. I think of the sex scene with Halle Berry and Billy Bob Thornton in Monster's Ball, which is also kind of gritty and needy, but also very soap-operatic. This is not that. It's very muted and understated and quietly painful.

JC: You bring up the sex scene in Monster's Ball, which is clearly Really Good Sex. The sex in this movie is not Good Sex. Nobody really enjoys it a lot. There's a lot of it...

GS: ...and they need it...

JC: But they don't enjoy it once they are having it. Tilda Swinton doesn't suddenly become luminous just because she's getting laid again.

GS: How great is it when Tilda Swinton is in a movie? I think she is so affecting in this part. She is best in this movie when she has no dialogue...when Ewan McGregor touches her for the first time, and you see her reaction? Ohmigod. She is SO expressive in this movie.

JC: She's always a very physical actress. Even you go back to something like Orlando, which is a movie with very little dialogue at all. She's almost like a silent film actress because she does most of her work with her face and body. In something like Adaptation, where she talks a lot, it's kind of jarring. She has that sort of Medeival painting face

GS: Like in all the Jarman films, where she was sort of iconic.

JC: And she's always underappreciated. You know, there was a movie that came out a couple of years ago called The Deep End, which was almost ignored, because in some ways it had some similarities to In the Bedroom, which I thought was one of the most overrated films of that year. But The Deep End too was a very quiet film.

GS: I think Tilda has been on a bit of a career reconstruction. She's tried to figure out how to move into playing roles that may not be arthouse -- and here she's playing this barge-owning woman, who is very rough. You can see the calluses on her hands, you can see how hard her life has been. This woman is bitterly hard. Her personality has that flinty thing. And in a sort of loveless marriage, and you know, her life is kind of transformed. Not by the reality of Ewan McGregor...the IDEA of Ewan McGregor. I think she's marvelous. What did you think of Ewan?

JC: I thought he was very good. You know, the thing about Ewan McGregor is that nobody other than George Lucas has ever been able to suck the charm out of him. But here they come close. And of course, this is a role that needs a relatively charmless --

GS: It's dark, it's brooding, but it's Brando.

JC: Yeah. It needs a charmless guy. And there's only one place in this movie where you see just a little of it where he looks at Tilda Swinton -- right after they take the body away, and you see just a hint of a smirk. And that's where you see the McGregor we're used to seeing in movies like Down With Love, and even going back to Shallow Grave, where he made his first splash, where he's always this charming rogue. And here he's the rogue, but he's not the charming rogue.

GS: And he's not meant to be. You're not supposed to think he's a scoundrel. He's as full of pain and longing and hurt as some of the other characters, though it's not as evident on the surface. I thought it was really interesting work for him.

JC: He does manage to pull this off. He keeps it dark...and they photograph him very unattractively. He's an interesting-looking guy. He's not a Jude Law who's gorgeous no matter what you do with him. He's this sort of blandly handsome guy.

GS: He's a matinee idol. I kept seeing shots of him in this movie where the sun would catch his hair, and you're kind of shocked by his handsomeness.

JC: But for the most part he's shot -- he's either shot or made up -- so that it looks like he's got bags under his eyes. He's got deep crow's feet. He looks worn. One of the reasons he's filthy so much in this movie is that it helps him get that dirty, etched-into-his-skin feel. This is not the archetypal sexy, young farmhand stud character here.

GS: Well, it's not movie sex, you're right. The rolling on the beach in From Here to Eternity? Not in this movie, here they're doing it on rocks, and they're doing it near leaking oil from trains...

JC:...and it doesn't look comfortable.

GS: And it's not.

JC: Yeah. And it doesn't look it. There is nothing in this movie that makes you want to go home and say, "Ooh, let's try that."

GS: (laughs) Right. There's nothing that makes you say "Oh, I want to do that." I bet you liked Peter Mullan in this.

JC: I like Peter Mullan in everything. To some degree, he plays almost the same character every time. He's this short, bantam rooster of a man, and there's always this kind of barely-suppressed rage in him. He was in a movie a couple of years ago called Session 9, about a bunch of guys doing asbestos abatement in an abandoned mental hospital, which was of course of interest to me because of where I work. And there, he's another of these character -- I can't go into it too much -- but he's always riveting. He's always the supporting guy...the cuckold, the bad guy who's not really all bad, like in The Claim...but he's always really good. And of course he directed The Magdalene Sisters, which is a terrific film which you haven't seen yet. He's a very talented guy.

GS: I actually think he has the best scene in the movie, when he has caught Ewan and Tilda together. But we never SEE him actually discover them. We hear him walking on the roof of the barge, and their discussion of realizing that he knows, and when he confronts Ewan later -- it is so heartbreaking. We all know the cuckolded husband, it's the oldest story in the book. But he makes that sort of powerlessness, in a man that should be powerful, really effective.

JC: And he doesn't react the way you expect him to. He doesn't take a swing at him, he doesn't yell, he doesn't scream. He doesn't do anything you expect him to do, but you know exactly what he's feeling. And that too is a very physical performance without a whole lot of words to it.

GS: There's so much rage, but also a complete resignation to the facts.

JC: Yup.

GS:The fourth major character is Emily Mortimer. And I have to admit, I don't care for Emily Mortimer generally. And I thought she was OK in this, but of the four of them I thought she was the least exceptional.

JC: Well, her character doesn't have a lot to do.

GS: I don't think that's true. I think there is a lot for her to do. She's the muse.

JC: That may be, but I don't think that's made clear. To some degree she sets up the rest of the film, but as written, I don't think it's made clear that she's a muse.

GS: I'll agree that her character is the most forced in terms of the screenplay. But she plays a really pivotal role, and it doesn't really have gravitas. There's that scene -- what I'll euphemistically call "the custard scene" -- that really serves as a crux to understanding everything that has happened before, and everything that's going to happen after. You realize why the relationships are the way they are. And I wanted more from Emily. I wanted to go deeper into her character and understand that a bit more.

JC:And it doesn't really quite work. It tells you more about him than about her.

GS: YOUNG ADAM is based on a book, and I would guess that the book tells us more than the movie does.

JC: I would guess that the book probably goes on for about 25 pages.

GS: (Laughs.) Lots of riding on the barge...

JC: And 25 pages of custard.

GS: The only other thing I want to say is I think it's a beautifully-shot movie. I think that looking at Glasgow and that part of Scotland -- it's gritty and it's dirty, but it's really got a magic. It's certainly realistic, I don't want to say it's not. But it's a magic realism. The water...when the camera goes underneath the water, or finding those amazing vistas. There's a scene where they set up a sort of makeshift bath and it's got a real eloquence to the camerawork. It's really exquisite. Are we done?

JC: Nope, the Summary: a very beautiful, not-terribly-compelling, but interesting arthouse film. With a rating that it doesn't deserve.

GS: The scandal is not warranted. It's a character study about need that has a quiet power. Maybe could have been stronger, but still worth seeing.