Human Nature

Released 2001
Stars Tim Robbins, Patricia Arquette, Rhys Ifans, Miranda Otto, Robert Forster, Mary Kay Place, Miguel Sandoval 
Directed by Michel Gondry

Is human life entirely based on sex, or is that only what it seems like on cable television? "Human Nature," a comedy written and produced by the writer and director who made us the great gift of "Being John Malkovich," is a study of three characters in war against their sexual natures. Lila (Patricia Arquette) fled to the woods at the age of 20, after hair entirely covered her body. She becomes a famous reclusive nature writer, a very hairy Annie Dillard, but finally returns to civilization because she's so horny. Puff (Rhys Ifans) is a man who was raised as an ape, thinks he's an ape, and is cheerfully eager on all occasions to act out an ape's sexual desires. And Nathan (Tim Robbins) was a boy raised by parents so strict that his entire sexual drive was sublimated into the desire to train others as mercilessly as he was trained.

With these three characters as subjects for investigation, "Human Nature" asks if there is a happy medium between natural impulses and the inhibitions of civilization--or if it is true, as Nathan instructs Puff, "When in doubt, don't ever do what you really want to do." The movie involves these three in a menage a trois that is (as you can imagine) very complicated, and just in order to be comprehensive in its study of human sexual behavior, throws in a cute French lab assistant (Miranda Otto).

The movie has nowhere much to go and nothing much to prove, except that Stephen King is correct and if you can devise the right characters and the right situation, the plot will take care of itself--or not, as the case may be. The movie is the feature debut of Michel Gondry, who directed a lot of Bjork's videos and therefore in a sense has worked with characters like these before. His movie is slight without being negligible. If it tried to do anything more, it would fail and perhaps explode, but at this level of manic whimsy, it is just about right.

Summary by Roger Ebert

This is one quirky film. It was written by Charlie Kaufman, and I knew I had to see it after watching his brilliant "Adaptation." "Human Nature" isn't at that level, but it's fun. Kaufman uses the movie to make wry social commentary which kept me chuckling throughout. He takes his poor creature, Puff, who is completely in tune with nature, and he enlists the world's most repressed individual, Nathan, to "civilize" him. Meanwhile he has Queen Kong Lila shunning society due to her hirsute nature and later doing everything she can to conform to society.

Throughout the millenia we've tried to civilize the animal instincts out of ourselves, and Kaufman concentrates on the sexual aspects of this repression. I'm still grinning about the intelligent, articulate Puff losing control at all the wrong times and dry-humping anything he could. If Nathan had any humanity, he would've gotten Puff a woman. Of course, if he had humanity, he wouldn't have locked Puff in a cage and attached a shock collar either. I think the scene where I laughed the hardest was when Puff repeatedly attacked the video screen despite a slew of shocks, because there's only so much you can do to control yourself when you're as backed up as Puff. --Bill Alward, February 16, 2003