Film Journal International
Friday, April 5 2002
Leave it to the folks who brought you Being John Malkovich (writer Charlie Kaufman, director Spike Jonze, though now in the producer's chair). Their new Human Nature is both wacky and intelligent at the same time.
The plot is not easy to describe, but it involves the interaction of several social misfits. Lila (Patricia Arquette), a woman cursed with excessive body hair, realizes the only way she will ever have sex is to shave herself and pretend to be normal. Her electrologist, Louise (Rosie Perez), becomes her best friend and sets her up her with Nathan (Tim Robbins), a brilliant but virginal behavioral scientist.
Lila and Nathan begin a fulfilling affair, despite the fact that Nathan's French lab assistant, Gabrielle (Miranda Otto), tries to lure him away. One day, during a hike in the woods, Lila and Nathan discover a feral man (Rhys Ifans), whom they capture and take back to the lab. Nathan and Gabrielle then rename the man Puff and teach him the finer points of Western elite culture in a series of 'civilizing' experiments. Meanwhile, at home, Nathan finds out about Lila's hair growth, and leaves her for Gabrielle. But the affair is short-lived and he returns to Lila when she dramatically changes her look for him. Gabrielle then walks out and Lila takes over as assistant in the lab.
Nathan and Lila civilize Puff further by electrocuting him every time he wants sex. Eventually, they take Puff on the lecture circuit, where he impresses Nathan's colleagues. But Nathan feels the urge for Gabrielle once again and Lila leaves him for good. Finally, Lila, with help from her friends, kidnaps Puff from the lab, and helps him escape to the forest. When Nathan tries to recapture him, tragedy—and a U.S. Senate probe—results.
Like its characters, Human Nature defies categorization—it’s a blend of screwball comedy, musical, romance and melodrama. But what makes the film unique are its sly, oblique references to the nature-vs.-nurture debate and to Piaget's theory of social cognition. Screenwriter Kaufman seems to be saying we're all social constructions, whether we start out as the cultured Nathan or the primitive Puff. Thus, everyone desires aspects of both nature and civilization.
Kaufman and director Michel Gondry (in his feature debut) merrily refer to a whole history of books and films that have dealt with the limits of developmental construction: Tarzan, Pygmalion, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, A Clockwork Orange, The Wild Child and Planet of the Apes. Interestingly, another new film, Esther Kahn, 'remakes' Truffaut's Wild Child in a much more serious and reverential manner, but comes up with a similar conclusion.
Though not as intellectually stimulating as Alain Resnais’ Mon Oncle d'Amerique (which also uses lab mice as anthropomorphic figures), Human Nature finds its comfortable place as metaphysical farce, with less of the misogyny and self-conscious cleverness that marred Being John Malkovich.
(Source)