In his review of The Counselor, this weekend’s Cormac McCarthy-penned border heist film, Vulture’s Bilge Ebiri asks, “Can a movie be both a catastrophe and strangely compelling — maybe even, gasp, good — at the same time?” One scene in particular stands as a prime example: a mind-blowing piece of cinematic smut. In it, Malkina (Cameron Diaz), the evil, cheetah-loving mistress of Reiner (Javier Bardem), has intercourse – yep, full on, orgasm-inducing sexual intercourse – with a yellow convertible. How exactly does this act of automotive erotica go down? Reiner narrates the filthy flashback out loud, so we can get a good idea of the anatomical nitty gritty. You’ll never see catfish the same way again.
The conversation takes place at an extravagant desert compound between a shadowy, unnamed lawyer known as the Counselor (Michael Fassbender) and his partner in an unspecified, shadowy business deal, Reiner (Javier Bardem). Reiner has revealed that there is something he wishes to forget. The scene that follows is interspersed with flashbacks.
Reiner: I don’t know, let’s talk about something else here.
Counselor: Just pull up your socks and tell me.
Reiner: Yeah … I don’t know.
Counselor: What is it you’d like to forget?
Reiner: Alright. I would like to forget about Malkina fucking my car.
Counselor: What?
Reiner: See?
Counselor: What did you just say?
Reiner: I said I’d like to forget about Malkina fucking my car.
Counselor: What the hell are you talking about?
Reiner: You remember that yellow California I had?
Counselor: Sure, nice car
Reiner: Very nice car. Anyway, this was a while back, not that long, we’d been getting it on for a while and we came back one night. We were staying up at Cloudcroft. We drove out in the golf course and parked and were sitting there talking. And for no particular reason that I could see, she slides off her knickers and hands them to me and gets out of the car. I asked what she was doing and she says: ‘I’m going to fuck your car.’
Counselor: Alright.
Malkina (in flashback): Leave the door open.
Reiner: So she goes around and climbs up on the hood of the Ferrari. And holds her dress up around her waist and spreads herself across the windshield in front of me. With no panties on. And she’s got this Brazilian wax job. Don’t, don’t even think I’m making this up – you can’t make this up. She was a dancer, so she does this full split, and then she starts running herself up and down on the glass, and she leans down, to see if I’m watching right now, as if I’m sitting there reading my email. And kisses me upside down and then she tells me this: I’m gonna come. I thought, well I’m losing my fucking mind, that’s what’s happening here. Really it was like one of those, one of those catfish things, you know, one of those bottom feeders you see going up the way of the aquarium sucking its way up the glass (makes popping sound with his mouth) Really it was … hallucinatory. You see a thing like that, it changes you.
Counselor: Jesus.
Reiner: Yeah tell me about it.
Counselor: Did she…
Reiner: Did she what?
Counselor: Did she come?
Reiner: Yeah, sure, yeah. Finally she climbs down and she comes around and she gets in the car and shuts the door and I hand her her knickers and she puts them in her purse and she, she looks at me like to see what I thought about that. What I thought about it … well, I don’t know what I thought about it, I mean, still don’t. It was too … gynecological almost. But mostly I was just fucking stunned. And I asked her if she’d ever done that before and she said she’d done everything before. And I believe her.
Counselor: Jesus. Catfish.
Reiner: Yeah, I don’t know. I think so, yeah.
Counselor: You think she knew what kind of effect this might have on a guy?
Reiner: Jesus, Counselor, are you kidding? She knows everything.
