Rent Human Nature (2001)

SIMULTANAGNOSIA - Human Nature review by Frank TALKER™

Very funny movie about a White culture so neurotically obsessed with social conformity that social behaviour becomes largely a pretence in which observing others becomes a form of social control wherein everyone is watching everyone else for signs of non-conformity.

In this scenario, personal relationships are inevitably faked, with a concomitant preoccupation with physical appearance and smart dress - along with emotionally-repressed behaviour. The characters know whom they are and what their actual natures are, which tell them what to do, yet most are openly resentful and overtly jealous of anyone courageous enough to actually love themselves for themselves - no matter the potential for social censure.

The funniest parts of the movie concern affectionless upbringings which leave many of the characters with a great difficulty in creating meaning in their lives and, thus, any kind of personal fulfilment. They become physical adults yet remain emotionally-immature in repeating the same psychologically-conditioned and emotionally-conditioning mistakes of their parents. Only the ethnic-minority characters have any genuine and expressive sense of life for us to contrast with the idiosyncacies of the White ones.

Underneath all of this simmering self-alienation is a desire for the kind of impassioned sex which helps us to understand ourselves with greater clarity and others with greater insight. Rhys IFANS' hilarious attempts at sexual congress with objects and strangers (which lead to mild electric shocks administered by the disapproving and his subsequent immersion in the world of prostitution) makes this point brilliantly. But the focus of so many of the characters on science, as opposed to intuition, as a means of self-realisation means few succeed at developing a full sense of their own humanity.

Despite it being as sexually coy, this movie is an eloquent plea for the essential humanity of humanity, which still does not endeavour to explain why White culture is so enamoured of the emotional repression shown here.