Anthology projects always sound much better than they turn out to be. Yet more often than not, the entries are halfhearted throwaways or half-formed riffs, not unlike the B-sides that some bands toss onto charity compilations. Even so, Eros seems like an especially strong idea: It's a triptych of erotic-themed short films directed by contemporary giants Wong Kar-wai and Steven Soderbergh, and nonagenarian master Michelangelo Antonioni. But the auteurist feast turns out to be a paltry spread, with one director on autopilot, another playing it safe, and the last apparently working on assignment for the European Red Shoe Diaries. Proving the rule that it's hard to make onscreen erotica look remotely sexy, the best of the three (Soderbergh's entry) succeeds by being brazenly anti-sexy—he didn't ignore the assignment, exactly, but he ties it up in deft comedic neuroses.
Separated by lovely painted interludes featuring a lilting Caetano Veloso score, Eros opens with Wong's The Hand, a characteristically ravishing yet oddly rote chamber piece that seems like the runoff from In The Mood For Love. Set almost entirely in an elegantly decorated room, it centers on a sophisticated courtesan (Gong Li) who makes a strong impression on her tailor (Chang Chen) when he overhears her pleasuring one of her clients. Chen's love for Gong goes unspoken and unrequited, but things change when the two meet again years later under different circumstances. The first collaboration between Wong and Gong pays homage to the Chinese beauty with lighting that caresses her features, but the ambience carries too much of the load.
Perhaps knowing that he could never out-art Wong or Antonioni, Soderbergh opens his brisk, amusing Equilibrium with a faux-erotic dream sequence, then backtracks to a psychiatrist's office, where two lonely sad-sacks can only think about being somewhere else. As the dreamer, Robert Downey Jr. babbles on the couch about the woman of his fantasies, but he's tortured with guilt about it because he's happily married. Meanwhile, his psychiatrist Alan Arkin pretends to listen, giving the occasional "uh huh" as affirmation, but he mostly peers through binoculars at a woman in the neighboring building. Working from his first original script since Schizopolis, Soderbergh writes dialogue with the pungent snap of a good one-act play, and his dialed-down ambitions make a good foil to the entries of his more art-damaged peers.
Both Wong and Soderbergh dedicate their films to Antonioni, but to say that the aging Italian icon has lost the old magic doesn't begin to account for the pretentious calamity that is The Dangerous Thread Of Things, which is just as nonsensical as its mysterious title. Based on a short story from Antonioni's book That Bowling Alley On The Tiber, the film listens intermittently to the bickering between an Italian sexpot and her American boyfriend. But before long, topless women on beaches and under waterfalls permanently distract Antonioni, who ogles them for some obscure symbolic reason that only he and his most hardened devotees understand. Note to future omnibus producers: Try to save the best for last.