You would think that Il Fantasma dell’Opera>would be the first time in a person’s life when she would have seen a man getting it on with an animal.

Well, guess what!

Nutshell: An adaptation of Honore Balzac’s short story, Passion in the Desert centers around a French officer who gets separated from his regiment and ends up forming a bond with a female leopard who helps to keep him alive. And, uh…other things.

Yeah, those things.

I almost can’t believe I saw this years ago, mostly because you’d think it would have inured me to ratsex. But nope!

I will say that I didn’t necessarily enjoy the movie; the first half is a lot of men in period costumes running awkwardly in the sand and making big speeches, and the second half is a really uneasy blend of social statement and man/leopard porn.

“You shut up about my girlfriend!”

What’s amazing about the movie is the level of (non-sex) intimacy between the actor playing NoBoundaries and the leopard. On the official site, the director talks about how they planned this movie years in advance and actually raised three (apparently abandoned? already captive? Oh, documentation on animal rights, you’re so elusive) leopard cubs to be comfortable around humans. They cast the part by bringing the top choices to the zoo and putting them in front of a fully-grown tiger, which, HA! “If you don’t pee yourself, the part is yours!”

Another thing this movie does well is that it constantly reminds you that the leopard is an animal, and the fact that this guy starts humanizing her and looking at her romantically is because the desert is making him TOTALLY CRAZY and not, you know, suggesting that getting it on with leopards is at all acceptable.

“I SAID SHUT UP ABOUT MY GIRLFRIEND!”

The rest of the movie is clearly just warm-up for the (admittedly evocative) shots of leopard/man drinking/fighting/frolicking/lovin’, and the tragic payoff when he tries to tie her up to make her wait for him (men!), and she’s like, “That’s interesting! Or we could try this,” and bites his arm off.

The metaphors do slowly unfurl if given enough time, and despite all its total ickiness, the relationship between the man and the leopard is beautifully filmed and the resolution is about what you’d hope from a guy who messes with wild leopards.

Sadly, if you’re looking for any kind of in-depth commentary I’ll have to bow out; I haven’t seen this movie since the first time, back in 2000. (I rode my steam-bike all the way to the general store to meet the Pony Express rider who delivered it to me!) Some of my memories are fuzzy. THANK GOODNESS. (Uh, except that one time I made watch it with me. I’m a terrible person.)

So that no one has to actually watch the movie, some brave soul on YouTube (who is not me!) made a clip of all the good parts, and by “good” I mean both “beautiful shots of animal-and-man living together” and “screamingly uncomfortable make-out scene between a MAN and a LEOPARD WHAT IS WRONG WITH SOME PEOPLE.”

“DO WE NEED TO GO OUTSIDE AND TALK ABOUT YOU DISRESPECTING MY GIRLFRIEND?”