'Center of the World': More Than Skin-Deep By Stephen Hunter Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, May 11, 2001

Peter Sarsgaard and Molly Parker in "The Center of the World." (Meila Penn)

Richard (Peter Sarsgaard) has plenty of dot.com money but no real.life. Florence (Molly Parker) has too much real.life -- she's a stripper in a lap dance joint -- and not enough money. A deal is struck between the computer geek and the professional exhibitionist: She will go to Vegas with him for $10,000. But she will be "available" only four hours a night and then only by the rules of the strip club, which include any amount of looking but no amount of touching and no actual intercourse. No kissing, either.

You might think Richard is getting cheated out of his $10,000, but the truth is, that's exactly what he wants, or so he tells himself. He isn't hungry for human intimacy, for the responsibilities of empathy, compassion, commitment and connection, and in any event, he doesn't have the time to develop them. His motto might be: Only disconnect. He doesn't want a woman, he wants a living porn movie.

As for Florence, she wants the 10 thou. If she has to spend a weekend smiling, wiggling and oomphing while talking dirty in a husky voice, well, that's what she has to do.

Director Wayne Wang is asking a very tough question here: How comfortable are the roles we play as men and women as opposed to the selves we are as men and women? Though the arena here is powerfully sexual, and though the sex is powerfully detailed, it is also metaphorical. For the question has larger meaning. Who do you want to be with? Do you want Sally, the living woman, with her pimples and bad breath and nasty morning humor; or do you want some idealized thing called "Wife"? Do you want Tom, with his sullenness, his odors, his creepy assumption of male entitlement, or do you want some idealized thing called "Husband"? Where do Sally and Tom end and Wife and Husband begin? Do you love Sally or Wife; do you love Tom or Husband?

As for Richard and Florence, they came to party and stayed to connect. You can probably see where this one is going, and in some sense it recalls Bernardo Bertolucci's great "Last Tango in Paris," also about man, woman, room, also about role and communication and preference.

In moments neither wanted nor anticipated, Richard and Florence begin to see behind the roles to discover, in each case, a surprisingly decent person. This changes all the rules; it also changes the roles.

Now, Richard wants not the ritual of professional exhibition, with its themes of dominance and submission as it builds toward masturbatory release, but the intimacy of emotion, with the lights off, where you don't see a damn thing but you feel the other person's sweet closeness. And maybe Florence wants the same thing, but her question is even thornier: In my line of work, can I afford it?

It's interesting to watch the stakes change as the weekend-long transaction continues: neither, in the beginning, had much to risk; both, by the end, have too much to risk. They travel from numbness to terror and back again; that's a hell of a weekend in Vegas.

Florence -- brilliantly, bravely played by Parker, the Canadian actress who was but a church mouse in the grand tapestry of "Sunshine" -- is the compleat professional, meaning that she's two entirely different personas. By night, she's made up to the nines, a one-woman theatrical production called "Toy-R-Me." She's all arches and tensed muscles and pelvic shamelessness and aggression.

But Parker shows us what's behind this hard woman of the demimonde, even while suggesting that Florence enjoys the aspects of control and domination that go with the role. Behind is a wan, sad thing, somewhat lost, her trust in her fellow man and woman all but shot. And while Parker shows a great deal of her body, she shows a great deal of Florence's soul, too. That's called acting.

Sarsgaard is equally good. He has the rumpled-nerd thing down, with weird twists of arrogance (he becomes an alpha monster when he's playing video games), one of those men who might suffer from the tragic debilitation of excess intelligence. He knows everything but he feels nothing; when he starts feeling things, it's quite an adventure.

Wang, whose work has heretofore been scandalously free of scandal ("The Joy Luck Club," "Anywhere but Here"), has not submitted the film to the MPAA, clearly to avoid an NC-17 rating. That begs the question: Is it erotic or is it pornographic? Can it possibly be both?

No, it can't. It can't be pornographic for technical reasons -- for all its nudity and powerful sexual posturing, it scarcely makes public the privates of his cast and it never shows how they might fit together -- but also for philosophical ones as well. It's really not interested in the act, but in the dance, and the relationships that give the dance context. Pornography is literal, eros is metaphorical. Porn gets you in the glands, eros in the imagination.

In "The Center of the World," Wang is working on your mind, not your body.

The Center of the World (86 minutes, at area theaters) is unrated but contains nudity and sexual imagery.