Wild Orchid

Jacqueline Bisset, Mickey Rourke, Carr+ª Otis. An international banker and her innocent young assistant encounter bizarre sexual obsession. 1990/color/111 min/R/widescreen.

Back when he wasn't relegated to the lesser cable channels, soft-porn meister Zalman King uncorked this howler of a drama on moviegoers, who were initially titillated by the ratings battle, but then shrugged and went off in search of the next cheap sensation. Model and subsequent Mickey Rourke squeeze Carré Otis plays a brilliant young attorney--well, we're told she's brilliant, although watching her in action, straining to wrap those puffy lips around her legalese dialogue, definitely conjures up other adjectives. She's dispatched to Rio de Janeiro under the guise of real-estate law and ends up seduced both by the exotic culture and by a brooding, highly misunderstood and frighteningly orange-skinned multimillionaire (Rourke). Kinky (for the time) sex games and deliriously mannered dialogue make this a rather pretentious exercise, unleavened by any truly erotic sensuality. Fun for taunting purposes, though. --David Kronke