This summer, two auteur directors, Spike Lee and Stanley Kubrick (Eyes Wide Shut), take on the theme of marital discontent and sexual disloyalty. Neither attempt is really satisfying in creating an emotionally engaging metaphor for how we overcome the grip of sexual fantasy or obsession.

For our money, Summer of Sam was both the more realistic and the more optimistic in that disloyalty is ultimately paid off appropriately. However, the world of the movie is so violent, drug addled, and unattractive that we were left somewhat aghast. Here, much like in Lee’s Do the Right Thing, the violence, the heat, and the psychological pressure drive people out of control. Setting a love story of sorts in this setting took a particular Spike Lee touch.

In this movie, David Berkowitz, alias the Son of Sam, terrorizes part of the Island of Manhattan by shooting lovers as they spoon in their parked cars. The murders are really just a set up for the story of a macho, disco, hairdresser jerk married to a beautiful woman who wants only to love him and please him sexually. Like many of working class lotharios, this guy can’t or won’t get it on the way he likes with his wife. As his wife, she is only to be screwed quickly in the dark while almost every other woman he meets is the object of more adventurous satisfactions. The murders and vigilante manhunt in the Italian-American enclave set up the tensions that expose the jerk’s disloyalty to his wife and his best friend.

In a few rather aimless moments, Spike Lee goes to the hood as a TV news reporter to get comments about the Son of Sam murders as well as to cover lootings and rioting brought about by record heat and a power failure. Spike’s drawn out, incoherent speech looks foolish and detracts from the power of the story. Maybe, that was a way of emphasizing idiocy as one of the driving forces of human reactions.