Spanking the Monkey

The title "Spanking the Monkey" derives from an American slang expression for masturbation. The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals will doubtless be relieved to learn that no monkeys were spanked during the making of the film.

The Wikipedia entry for the film describes it as a "black comedy", which surprised me. There is little that is comic, even blackly comic, about it. It is rather one of those independent dramas about bickering, self-tormenting, dysfunctional American families. (See also "Lymelife", "Margot at the Wedding", "The Lifeguard" and many others). The main character is Ray Aibelli, a young man in his early twenties. He is a medical student who has just finished his first year at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has been offered an internship with the Surgeon General's department, a much sought-after appointment, but has had to turn it down, at his father's insistence, to look after his mother who has broken her leg.

Ray has a difficult relationship with his father, Tom, a travelling salesman whose job means he is often away from home. He has little sympathy with Ray's academic aspirations or his choice of medicine as a career and resents having to pay his college fees. Tom's relationship with his wife Susan is equally difficult, and he takes advantage of his frequent absences on business trips to cheat on her with prostitutes.

Ray's relationship with his mother is closer, although he is unhappy about being unable to take up his internship. There is little to do in the small town where he lives. He tries to get in touch with old friends from school, but finds that they are childish and immature with little in common with him. He dates a local teenager, Toni, but she is too young for him and their affair does not get very far. And then comes the development which has made this film notorious. A sexual attraction grows up between Ray and Susan and they have an incestuous relationship.

Some will find the very idea of a film about incest distasteful. This is not just because incest is widely regarded as immoral and is illegal in many countries. There are many other illegal or immoral human activities which do not evoke the same reaction. Murder, for example, is almost universally condemned as the most heinous of all crimes, but there are a vast number of films which involve at least one deliberate killing compared to the very few about incest. It is as if the cultural taboo against incest extended to writing, talking or even thinking about it, whereas we are perfectly free to write, talk or think about murder provided that we do not commit it.

Despite this cultural taboo, there have been some very good films on the subject. The two I am particularly thinking about are Louis Malle's "Le Souffle au Coeur" and Bertolucci's "La Luna", both of which, like "Spanking the Monkey", dealt with mother/son incest. I would not rate David O. Russell's film as highly as either of those, but it does have its points of interest. There are no major stars in it, which is not surprising; even in 1994 a Hollywood big name would not have got out of bed, much less signed up to do a movie, for $200,000, which was the film's entire budget. Nevertheless, you don't always need big names to make a well-acted movie.

All three of the main roles are well played. Benjamin Hendrickson as Tom probably has the easiest part to play because Tom is a straightforwardly unsympathetic character, a cold, selfish and domineering man who always puts his own needs and interests before those of his wife or son. Jeremy Davies as Ray and the late Alberta Watson as Susan have a more difficult task. Their characters, after all, are breaching one of our most basic taboos, and yet it is important that the audience should, if not necessarily sympathise with them, at least be able to understand their motivation. I think that, to a large extent, Davies and Watson succeed in this task. Even if this film is not in the same class as Malle's or Bertolucci's, it is considerably better than many "dysfunctional family" films- certainly better than the three I named in my second paragraph. 6/10.

This is a film whose title and poster not only give nothing away but actually mislead. The name Spanking the Monkey – a euphemism for masturbation – makes you think this must probably be a bawdy teen sex-comedy, while the poster depicts the picture of a real smart aleck. Both factors are bizarrely inappropriate, as the title, while mentioned once in the passing, is pretty much irrelevant, while the guy on the poster in no way reflects the character in the film who is anything but confident. Overall, this is a movie whose content is a very different proposition to its marketing. And perhaps that is because the material here is pretty difficult and challenging to say the least. I'm sure this must have stoked up some controversy in its day. After all, it deals with one of the ultimate taboo areas – incest; although, in this case it is admittedly of the consenting kind. It explores the troubling idea of the Oedipal Complex, via a sexual relationship between a mother and her son. It pulls off the impressive trick of simultaneously not pulling its punches, while still exercising a certain restraint. Material like this is so tricky that it needs very careful execution and David O. Russell, in his directorial debut, shows impressive ability to do just that.

It's about Ray, an introverted college student, who has a disastrous summer. He is coerced into looking after his bed-ridden mother by his uncaring, immoral salesman father. She is overly dependent on him not only physically but emotionally as well and soon is encouraging an unhealthy relationship. At the same time Ray is developing a very awkward relationship with a neighbouring girl and hanging out with old friends who antagonise him.

It's a drama about discomforts. Ray lives a life of humiliations at every turn. His father bullies him, his mother manipulates him, his girlfriend makes him feel sexually inadequate and his friends display little respect for him. Even his dog seems to antagonise him by constantly interrupting him while he has a, shall we say, moment with himself. It's a drama with a fair bit of black comedy sprinkled throughout. At heart it's about a very dysfunctional family. It works so well because of the characters and acting. Everybody is well-drawn and convincing, which is important given the extreme areas that the film explores. In particular, Jeremy Davies is really very good as Ray. He is definitely a sympathetic character who finds himself lost in a messed up situation that he struggles to find a way out of. Alberta Watson is also excellent in the role of his mother. She is an alluring presence and like Davies strikes the balance just right in what is also a very tricky and complex role.

An independent film that bravely confronts the subject of consensual incest is presented as a dark comedy in which ALBERTA WATSON and JEREMY DAVIES, as mother and son, have the key roles. It's their mother/son relationship at the heart of the story that is compelling and sometimes erotic--especially the scene where Davies has to massage his mother's legs and toes while they discuss why her road travelling husband isn't there to do it for her.

When the story strays to others outside this relationship, it fails to make the same connection. The father is strictly a man so obsessed with his own career that he ignores his wife. She, in turn, is a manipulative shrew who virtually seduces her son because she's a needy woman. The son's friends are depicted as total drug-happy boors and boozers whose minds are completely idle.

At times the story becomes dark and brooding--even intense--and yet there's a surface tension broken by laughter at some of the shenanigans going on in this dysfunctional, to say the least, family.

Outstanding work by JEREMY DAVIES and ALBERTA WATSON. He's highly sympathetic in his predicament all the way through and she's totally despicable in the manner by which she exerts control over him. Both show complete understanding of their difficult roles.

Summing up: Interesting tale, character-driven and flawed, but worth watching.

It's simply another one of the Greek myths retold in a modern setting. Those Greeks really knew how to write a cunning tale that cuts close to the bone. They wrote straight from human experience and feeling. Incest crept up on the young hero of the film with terrifying inevitability. They both knew what they were getting into, and went ahead even though they knew that they would subsequently experience "decision regret". A very enjoyable film that magically captures the passion of a summer holiday gone badly wrong.

Copying a tried and tested tale from the past is always a successful recipe for a good modern film, as Lucas has shown with borrowing from Homer's "The Iliad". This film is certainly capable of provoking strong emotion from the viewer, and I think that most of us would have a hard time resisting sexual advances in those circumstances if the woman in question was such a fox.

A compelling tale, made all the more sickening for it's overt basis in human experience.

Not one to watch with your mum (unless you fancy her!).

I really don't like the marketing of this movie. The tagline and the doesn't really tell you what's going on. 'Flirting With Disaster' was a comedy, and this is a drama. A tragedy more accurately. The movie has its laughs, but it's the anything but humorous incestuous events, that are the the core of this story. I think David O. Russell is a very gifted filmmaker and here he presents a very unreal subject in a very believable and compelling way. But if you are looking for a comedy, see "Flirting With Disaster.'