Scarlett Johansson's breakout adult role was 2003's "Lost In Translation," which opens with a long shot of the then-18-year-old actress's butt in pink panties as she lies on her side.
The image is more than just sexy. As analyzed by Dave Ehrlich at Reverse Shot:
Filmmakers have used them to a wide variety of ends, most often to tease, tempt, or titillate, but [director] Sofia Coppola uses Scarlett Johansson’s as a cry for help. ...
We meet her ass before we know her name (it’s Charlotte) or even the film’s title; before we learn that she’s a 22-year-old Yale grad (philosophy major) who’s traveled as far away from her Los Angeles home as this planet will let her, accompanying her photographer husband on his latest assignment because she doesn’t know what else to do; before we know that she’ll soon be changed by a deep but sexless romance with fading film star Bob Harris (Bill Murray). The pale pink of her underwear isn’t random, but rather the last vestige of a world she understood, a girlhood where things made sense and dreams didn’t necessarily have to come true in order to invigorate.
After the film establishes she is at a hotel in Tokyo, there is a shot of her sitting pants-less looking over the city.
Given the iconic status of this opening, it must be more than coincidence that the trailer for Johansson's science fiction action flick, "Lucy," opens with a shot of the actress lying in lingerie on a hotel bed in Taipei, Taiwan. But director Luc Besson's version is much darker.
Johansson, 28 in this film, is dressed in a sexy black bra and whatever is under the sheet at her waist. She also has a bandage wrapped around her stomach and appears in a terrified daze. "What did you do to my stomach," she asks in voiceover. And then she is dragged by Asian men in suits into an elevator, and there is a shot of her asking, "What's going on?"
Beyond this clever reference, the rest of the film, which comes out August 8, looks exciting and shows potential to be a sleeper hit in the face of established action franchises. Here's the full trailer:
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