Critiquing the facial expressions a person makes during sex is…well, it’s like critiquing the facial expressions a person makes during a sneeze. How you react to what’s happening to your body is largely involuntary, and at any rate unselfconciousness is a valuable trait for sex since it’s easier to get where you want to go if you’re not fretting about the right way to get there. But hey, this is acting, right? So I don’t feel as churlish as I otherwise would to draw a distinction between these two Dr. Elizabeth Clay sex-face moments.
The pout, I find funny. It’s like “Ooh, this is sexy, I’m sexy, he’s sexy, this feels sexy, look at me being sexy.” Imagine Dalton doing it—he’d look even goofier than he does when he’s got his getting-down-to-business face on while stalking her around the room like a literal sex panther waiting to strike. I don’t fault her for it! Sometimes people sincerely feel this way during sex, and make “sexy” faces to show both themselves and their partner that what’s going on is hot stuff. It’s not like she’s wrong if that’s what she’s doing. It’s just a little pose-y, a little Whitesnake video-y, a little Playboy Channel-y. In those respects it’s of its time.
The laugh, though? Hooo boy. That’s the good shit right there. If you’re laughing out of sheer delight during sex, something has gone very very right for you, that’s one thing. The other thing is that this allows us to perceive the Doc, and Dalton too once he starts grinning in response, as being in on the joke. She knows it’s kind of ridiculous to go to a dude’s barnpartment, look at your psychotic ex-husband’s mansion across the way, talk about your uncle raising you and your parents dying and your marriage collapsing, go for a guy’s junk before so much as kissing, get hoisted in the air to mount him while he stands up, get slammed up against the wall, and get slammed up agains the wall. Ya gotta laugh, folks!
So she does, and the moment is beautifully, erotically unselfconscious. It opens up the path to the scene’s climax (though not the participants’), in which Dalton holds her up and shuffles them both over to the bed with his pants half-down and a licensed medical practitioner around his waist, a move they both know is equal parts silly and cool. It’s an echo, in its way, of the way Carrie Ann gazes with slackjawed lust upon Dalton’s behind. That was her private moment; this is a moment Elizabeth is experiencing with Dalton, and it’s so much fun she’s got to share it with him. She can’t help it. It just bubbles up inside her, until release.
Tags: dalton, dr. elizabeth clay, kelly lynch, road house, the sex scene from road house