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# ‘Eros’ found to be a self-indulgent piece of work
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/eros-found-to-be-a-self-indulgent-piece-of-work/
- Published: 2005-04-08T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T06:33:43.000Z
- Author: Dan Dunn
- Tags: Entertainment, Santa Monica, #archive-import

For film directors, it appears group efforts are all the rage these days. Like “Sin City,” the current box office champ, “Eros” utilizes a trio of skippers to present three takes on a similar theme: Sexual desire. Unlike the former, the art-house-ish “Eros” isn’t very appealing. Young bucks Wong Kar Wai and Steven Soderbergh succeed in getting their names on a movie poster alongside one of their idols, the fading Italian auteur Michelangelo Antonioni (“L’ Avventura,” “La Notte”), but their efforts yield uneven results. Antonioni himself brings up the rear with a short called “The Dangerous Thread of Things” that is so laughably incoherent, it defies analysis … and that’s putting it kindly.

Wong Kar Wai’s “The Hand” is hands-down the best of the bunch. A dark and sensuous tale of an intemerate tailor’s (Chang Chen) unrequited love for a gorgeous Hong Kong call girl (Gong Li), “The Hand” is a disquieting reminder of what a fragile house of cards human sexuality can be. In Soderbergh’s “Equilibrium,” Robert Downey Jr. and Alan Arkin pull off some nifty give and take as, respectively, a skittish 1950s ad exec and his distracted shrink. The performances are a joy and the material intermittently funny, but “Equilibrium” feels conspicuously out of place in this particular collection. It’s not clear what, if anything, the filmmaker is trying to say about Eros. Like the disappointing “Ocean’s 12,” this short smacks of self-indulgence — it’s OK that Soderbergh gets his kicks working with his buddies, but is it too much to ask that he make it a little more fun for the rest of us? (Rated R for strong sexual content including graphic nudity, and for language. Running time: 104 minutes)

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on April 8, 2005.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/040805.pdf?ref=smdp.com)