Xperimental Eros
Anthology films are often a mixed bag. Whatever the theme, some of the films in the collection will, inevitably, be better than others and – in this case – the question of whether the hits outnumber the misses really will come down to how you feel about both experimental films and pornography.
The first film in the collection is King of Porn, is a sympathetic – and often amusing - portrait of Ralph Whittington, government worker, devoted father, ex-husband, man of leisure and collector of pornography. The film allows him to speak for himself as he shows off his stash – which has pretty much taken over his house – of over 400 videos, thousands of magazines and a horde of articles on the subject. Whittington comes off rather well in this film. Rather geeky, obviously, but fundamentally no worse than anyone else feeding an obsession with collecting pop-cultural ephemera.
Then we have two films (not sequentially) which I’m going to deal with together because, for me, Blue Movie and Removed highlight the difficulty that many filmmakers face when trying to bring an art-house or experimental sensibility to pornography. Both films take vintage porn – stag films, in the case of Blue Movie, and a piece of 70s Euro-smut in the case the case of Removed – and then rework it, over and over again, until the pornographic elements are thoroughly obscured.
The problem that both films run into is that porn and erotica are not the same and by simply removing or concealing the pornographic, we are left with a pair of films that are neither pornographic nor erotic. And, I have to admit, that I was left wondering what the point was.
I almost included The Colour of Love with the above two films, but this one is distinguished by some genuinely disturbing imagery buried under all of the reworking. The film – heavily reworked again – is dedicated to Doris Wishman and revolves around two women having bloody sex with a dead man. It’s an interesting film and one that could have been very powerful if the footage hadn’t been quite so (deliberately) degraded.
Similarly, Downs are Feminine attempts to rework sexual images. This time around, the approach is to use cut-out animation of pornographic photos against a tacky 1970s background. It all drifts along in a dreamy, vaguely surreal fashion and – visually – there are some good ideas in there. But, ultimately, it really isn’t very clear what the film makers are trying to say, if anything.
The snappily titled The Influence of Ocular Light Perception on Metabolism in Man and Animal is a lot more effective. The film is built from a collection of seemingly random images, some of which are sexual and others more innocuous, thrown at the screen in rapid succession and it’s the rapid juxtaposition of the images that imbues the more mundane images with an often unexpected sexuality.
On a more cheerful note is Sneakin’ and Peekin’, which comes to us from 1976 and shows the results of two documentary film makers sneaking into a nudist camp. The film very successfully evokes the innocent sexuality of the George Harrison Marks’ early films.
Sexjunkie, the penultimate film in the anthology is by far the strongest. Both erotic and disturbing, this film takes the form of a video confessional of a nymphomaniac and her obsession with sex – not as love but as a physical craving.
The final film in the collection is Pacifier, an adolescent ode to porn. The premise is that when he was 13 Oscar Perez wrote a couple of stories for Penthouse Forum. Then, unable to find where to send them, he forgot about them. Years later when he rediscovered his stories, he decided to turn them into films.
While the script for Pacifier supposedly taken directly from the letter, the film is very much played for laughs and very effectively captures a 13 year old’s understanding of – and fantasies about – adult sex. As well as being very funny, this film more than any of the others, asks the audience to consider who consumes porn and why.
Overall, I found Xperimental Eros to be a very mixed collection and I think that, more than anything, this reflects the mixed state of art-house erotica. As such, it’s an interesting, rather than consistently enjoyable collection, but one that is worth seeing if you are both reasonably open minded and interested in experimental films.
Sunday 05 Aug 2007 | Paul Pritchard | Animation and Anime, Documentary, Fantasy, Exploitation
