Spider Lilies: Tattoo you

It’s a paradox that our modern media contains so much sexual content, but so little of it is actually sexy. Films that explore human desire frequently tend to be moralistic, feel-bad tales such as Little Children or mechanical exercises in the reproductive cycle such as 9 Songs. The Taiwanese film Spider Lilies, showing at the 20th annual Out on Film Festival, is one of the rarities that celebrates eroticism while neither embarrassing nor scolding its audience. Lesbian filmmaker Zero Chou suffuses Spider Lilies with such sensuality that we barely notice how seldom it becomes explicit.

Winner of the Best Feature Film award of the Berlin Film Festival, Spider Lilies (3 stars, 8:30 p.m., Sun., Oct. 14, Landmark Midtown Art Cinemas) explores an offbeat dance of pursuit and retreat involving two women in Taipei. Jade (Rainie Yang) earns a living as a coquettish “Web girl,” flirting with anonymous Web-seekers and offering the occasional “one-on-one” session, although she never physically meets her clients. Takeko (Isabella Leong), who’s almost 10 years older, works as a tattoo artist and sports an elaborate spider lily tattoo on her arm.

When Jade visits the tattoo parlor and wants a spider lily of her own, Takeko hesitates, explaining that the flower allegedly lines the path to Hades and serves as a bad omen. The older woman doesn’t seem to realize that she knew Jade 10 years earlier, when Jade was a lonely, lovelorn 9-year-old prone to wearing a green wing. Complicating matters in the leisurely paced story, Jade believes that a regular visitor to her website is Takeko, when it’s actually a smitten police officer running a sting operation.

Spider Lilies seldom proves as hypnotic and technically accomplished as one of Wong Kar-Wai’s voluptuous studies of obsession, but it’s not as obscure, either. The filmmaker implies some fairly straightforward, pop-psychological explanations for the sexual makeup of both women. It seems unsurprising that Jade, abandoned as a young girl (in flashbacks that ruthlessly go for the heartstrings) would be both isolated and an exhibitionist as a Web girl. For Takeko, desire is difficult to extricate from guilt following a childhood trauma.

Perhaps Spider Lilies relies on some schematic plotting and spells out some of its ideas too overtly, but Chou, like a practiced seductress, leaves just the right things to our imagination.

Out on Film best bets

THE YEAR OF PAPER 3 stars (NR) -- Inspired by the firestorm over homosexual spouses and the “protection” of traditional marriage, documentary filmmakers Kelly Rouse and Nikki Parker record the initial year of marriage for three couples: one straight, one gay and one lesbian. All three pairs seem to be equivalently in love, but while the straight couple quickly becomes pregnant, the other couples see their legal marriages (from early 2004) invalidated before their first anniversaries. Talking-head interviewees from either side of the debate contradict each other a little too predictably, and the narration (from “Frasier’s” Peri Gilpin) spells out the themes with condescending simplicity. But all three couples emerge as likable, and it would be interesting to see the documentarians revisit the marriages in five or 10 years, along the lines of Michael Apted’s 49 Up films, to see which ones survive. Sat., Oct. 13, 1 p.m. Landmark Midtown Art Cinemas – Holman

SHELTER ME (RIPARO) 4 stars (NR) – Exploring the fragile and complex dynamics among lovers, families, classes and countries, Italian director Marco S. Puccioni offers shelter from stale cinema. The international stars provide beautifully subtle and occasionally heart-wrenching performances, particularly Maria de Medeiros as Anna, a wealthy woman who, struggling to do what is right, ends up forever damaging the delicate relationships she shares with her lover, Mara (Antonia Liskova), and a young stowaway (Mounir Ouadi), both of whom she desperately wishes to save. Tues., Oct. 16, 7:30 p.m. Theatre Decatur – Allison C. Keane

THE HOUSEBOY 4 stars (NR) – Palpable despair nearly becomes unbearable in director Spencer Schilly’s heavy holiday tale of a suicidal young man yearning for real love and friendship. After discovering that his days of sharing a bed with an established gay couple are coming to a close, sad-eyed Ricky (Nick May) channels his loneliness into a confused hunger for anonymous sex, much to his (and our) emotional detriment. Schilly offers up a tale both cautionary and full of hope, with an ultimate focus on the power of human connection and personal redemption. Sat., Oct. 13, 7:15 p.m.; Tues., Oct. 16, 9:45 p.m. Landmark Midtown Art Cinemas – Keane

THE CURIOSITY OF CHANCE 3 stars (NR) – Director Russell P. Marleau offers another incarnation of the misfit teen story in which the eccentric in question, Chance (the angular Tad Hilgenbrink), attempts social survival at his new high school. The comedy revolves around Chance’s crush on the sensitive, guitar-playing jock next door (Brett Chukerman), as well as his own journey of acceptance by (or triumph over) stereotypes of drag queens, preposterously well-spoken international students and, of course (if it wasn’t already obvious), homophobic football bullies. Despite performances that occasionally border on the stilted, this flashy, ’80s-pop distraction is ultimately worth a chance. Wed., Oct. 17, 7:15 p.m. Landmark Midtown Art Cinemas – Keane

Out on Film. Oct. 11-18. 404-352-4225. www.outonfilm.com.