Isabella Rossellini’s Green Porno
Isabella Rossellini in a still from one of her short films. Photo: Jody Shapiro
“Tonight we’re going to talk about sex,” announces Isabella Rossellini in her seductive Italian accent.
The besotted audience, which began applauding enthusiastically the moment the stunning actress stepped on stage in a floor-skimming black coat-dress and multi-string pearls, seems to shuffle slightly closer.
“It won’t be pornographic … but it will be obscene,” she teases.
“Will it be erotic? I don’t know – I don’t know your tastes.”
What follows is an explicit, enlightening, highly entertaining and frequently hilarious exposé of the sex lives of insects, sea creatures and other animals delivered by one of the most famous European models and screen sirens of the late 20th century (she was formerly the face of Lancôme and star of films such as David Lynch’s Blue Velvet).
Deliciously offbeat, the one-woman stage show/lecture is the spin-off of a series of short films 61-year-old Rossellini made for Robert Redford’s online Sundance Channel.
Standing sometimes front of stage at Her Majesty’s and sometimes behind a lectern hiding props ranging from a toothbrush, rubber gloves and tape measure to a tableau of a sea lion harem and a hamster onesie, Rossellini uses puppetry, mime and monologue to describe the anatomy, sexual rituals and reproductive behaviour of her subjects.
With a script prepared with the help of screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière, she speaks frankly in front of a giant screen showing snippets of the short films in which she embodies all manner of creatures. There’s Rossellini as a male giant praying mantis mounting a cannibalistic female partner; as a female duck with multiple labyrinthine vaginas; as a hermaphrodite, sado-masochistic slug. Several images of her own family (she is the daughter of Swedish actress Ingrid Bergman and Italian director Roberto Rossellini) are also used to suggest parallels between animal and human relationships.
Rossellini is playful, sexy and utterly charming. No doubt her star power attracted many people to the show, but her passion for the science at the heart of this performance is so infectious one imagines half the audience might suddenly be considering returning to university to study animal behaviour, as the actress herself is doing at New York’s Hunter College.
With its depictions of the sexual diversity of all manner of creatures, Green Porno mounts a challenge to the idea that certain orientations and behaviours can be labelled “unnatural” or kinky. Who knew cuttlefish were transsexuals or that dolphins, generally portrayed as so sweet and innocent, are actually incredibly sexually adventurous?
Rossellini is also extremely funny; loud laughter bubbles up from the stalls and balcony throughout the 85-minute performance.
Like a ménage à trois involving Play School, David Attenborough and Masters of Sex, Green Porno highlights what a wonderfully weird and diverse natural world we inhabit. It also showcases the immense talent, wit and charisma of Isabella Rossellini.
Green Porno was a fitting way to close the 2014 Adelaide Festival and a highlight amid a program of 39 ticketed events which organisers say has delivered box-office revenue of $2.3 million across and attracted what is expected to be the highest number of attendances in four years.
You’ve missed your chance to see Rossellini at the Adelaide Festival, but you can find many of her short films about mating in the natural world on YouTube.
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Click here for InDaily’s stories and reviews from the 2014 Adelaide Festival, including WOMADelaide and Adelaide Writers’ Week.