Word: sapphic
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...great deal of hectic coupling in this film, all of it staged with chintzy tastefulness, as if the participants were being arranged for a department-store window display. The exotic Far Eastern locations make for a few postcard snaps and a lot of unintentionally hilarious dialogue. Murmurs a sapphic archaeologist setting up a rendezvous with Emmanuelle: "Come to the klongal 2." Had Terry Southern been involved, the city of Bangkok might have been the occasion for a few robust puns. But that, like much else, presumably does not translate...
...similar flexibility of gender. The one readily identifiable figure, Joe Dallesandro, plays - badly, of course - a servant in a rich, decadent household. In such surroundings his New York street accent is in vigorating: "What's the count doin' with you two who-ahs?" he inquires of two sapphic sisters, and gets only a glazed sneer for a response...
...pauses seem to be toothless gaps in the text. They indicate not minds and hearts too full for words, but too empty and too weary to go on. The actors mask the play's anemia beautifully. Rosemary Harris' Anna, in particular, is a remarkable achievement, with its Sapphic intricacies and paradoxically cool eroticism. Similarly, Peter Hall's direction is impeccable, and he has imbued the inaction of the evening with a rich golden stillness that the words themselves do not fully convey. The words, as always in Pinter, are rationed, unadorned and precise. They are also...
...overheard to inquire, "Do you think they're all certified virgins?" No such assurances are sought, although such extreme measures are taken to separate the contestants from the male sex that at times it seems as if the pageant were run by members of a Sapphic cult. Contestants are not supposed to be seen talking with their fathers. Under the heading "We Love Your Parents-But!" the contestants' guidebook tells why: "They [fathers] are generally too young and too handsome to be considered by the general public as anything but a 'gentleman friend...
Garry Wills, an Esquire contributing editor with a gift for wit and lucidity, occasionally writes an article that is absolutely unreadable to most people. There was, for instance, his piece in the American Journal of Philology, "The Sapphic 'Umwertung Alter Werte.' " It began: "The poem differs from other early (i.e., pre-Pindaric) Priameln in two respects. First: the catalogue, which seems to be completed in the first strophe with the climactic iyw 8é, is resumed after an interval of three strophes. Second: the relationship between the catalogued values and the climactic one seems tenuous...