To close out the year, GQ is revisiting the most fascinating ideas, trends, people, and projects of 2023. For all of our year-end coverage, click here.
This spring Joaquin Phoenix starred in Beau Is Afraid, an Ari Aster movie that’s essentially about a man who really needs to nut. (Seriously, it's a problem. His balls are extremely enlarged, and he’s never had sex because he's afraid he will die if he does.)
When Beau finally does end up in bed with a woman (Parker Posey) she puts on Mariah Carey's "Always Be My Baby" and then rides him until he ejaculates. He doesn't die—but she does, freezing up like a statue and somehow going into rigor mortis mid-coitus. And then Beau's mom, assumed dead and played by Patti LuPone, walks in. It was her bedroom after all, adding to the ick.
For any other actor, that would be enough uncomfortably bizarre sex scenes for one movie year, but not Phoenix. He also makes intercourse somehow hilarious and upsetting playing Napoleon Bonaparte in Ridley Scott's Napoleon. Despite the undying love Phoenix's Napoleon professes for Vanessa Kirby's Josephine, when they copulate there's little by way of romance. His style of lovemaking—insanely aggressive pumping from behind—seems like something out of a lowbrow comedy, rather than a historical epic by one of the most prestigious living directors.
Back in 2019, Phoenix’s Oscar-winning turn in Joker—where he reduced the Batman villain to a skeletal portrait of mental illness, a man who thinks he’s a comedian but looks terrifying and sad to everyone else, including viewers—bolstered his longstanding reputation as a Very Serious Actor. And yet in 2023 the playful side of Phoenix came out like never before. In both Beau Is Afraid and Napoleon, Phoenix showed off what may be his new specialty: Portraying stunted man-babies with sexual anxieties. Turns out he's fantastic at it.
On paper Beau and Napoleon could not be more different. Beau is a man who has never amounted to anything. He's mommy issues incarnate, constantly frightened and overmedicated. He misses his flight to visit said mother when his keys and luggage are stolen from his door, after which his home is invaded by the hordes of vagrants living in his city. And then he learns his mother has died and must try to make it home for the funeral, impeded by weirdos and fueled by guilt.
Napoleon, on the other hand, is, y’know, an emperor—one of the most powerful men in history. But as played by Phoenix, he's also something of an insecure child-man. Scott allows Phoenix to use his American accent in Napoleon, which means the supposedly great military genius sounds like the worst guy you ever went on a Hinge date with. His Napoleon is a brat who throws a temper tantrum every time he doesn't get what he wants. He's self-important certainly, but also a total crybaby saying things like, "Destiny has brought me this lamb chop" and, in reference to the British, "You think you're so great because you have boats." When he wants to have sex with Josephine, he starts making whimpering noises.
Most crucially, both Beau and Napoleon do not know how to speak with or deal with women. They both have domineering mothers, who know they have full control over their weak sons. Napoleon's mom eventually forces him to have sex with another woman to determine if Josephine is infertile or if he is; he obliges, walking into the situation like a scolded puppy. Meanwhile, the women they're involved with are objects of obsession rather than pure desire. These guys want to possess them, but they are not sure how to act when they are face to face.
Phoenix understands that both these men are utterly embarrassing, that their inability to regard women as anything but objects on a pedestal makes them buffoonish. Watching them flail is funny, and by leaning into the hilarity of their social incompetence, Phoenix does some of his best work on screen. It's not that I think Phoenix has become a looser actor, because there's still an intensity to his work—but that intensity is centered on making us laugh rather than making us cringe, and the result is so much more satisfying.
Which brings me back to those sex scenes. They are wonders of male ineptitude, horrifying in that they represent a complete lack of understanding of the inherently two-sided nature of the act—and in both films they’re played for laughs, not titillation. Humiliation is the name of the game here, and Phoenix is up for the task.
