Peccadillo Pictures

Category Archives: Erotic

Revealing the BODY ELECTRIC

Marcelo Caetano - dir

Director Marcelo Caetano

BODY ELECTRIC is a boudoir film. With each bed Elias lies in, a new universe opens from the narratives told by the characters. Bodies embracing and caressing each other, voices that speak softly and quietly, lovers who tell of their encounters, sexual adventures and dreams. My desire was to address love as something serial and repetitive, portraying a kind of affection that distances itself from romantic love and its already soiled conflicts.

Elias loves in a lightly, solar and anarchic way. He is 23 years old, openly gay, a migrant from north-eastern Brazil. He uses each encounter to shape his personality by becoming a kind of human prism, capturing what he can from his partners. He changes his colour, and transitions between the masculine and the feminine. He can be a committed worker, but also a mocking anarchist. In this way, the film questions the socially established places for gay people, black people, immigrants, and workers. My aim is always to seek the individual, avoiding the discourse of identity that tries to capture and classify everybody.

BODY ELECTRIC is also a Bildungsroman. Elias comes into adulthood with great difficulty while trying to balance his personal pleasure with professional life. He is resistant to some conflicts simply because he does not believe in the high value that professional success and marital happiness have in our society. For him it is necessary to grow on his journey. I love filming these encounters and I love them more, the more unlikely they are. Perhaps the film’s most prominent political face is resisting intolerance by building links between socially distant people.

The film is influenced by Walt Whitman’s poem I SING THE BODY ELECTRIC in which the American author celebrates the beauty of bodies, regardless of age, gender, colour and form. I was also very touched by cinema of the 60’s and 70’s, especially the relation between word and image that I found in the poetic cinema of Pasolini and Joaquim Pedro de Andrade. The choice of words and the strength of the narration are structural to me. This is how I found the way to speak of these bodies, this group of workers, and Elias is my spokesman: Like Scheherazade in ONE THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS, he recounts his adventures as if he wanted, by the seduction of the story, to postpone the end of his youth.

Marcelo Caetano

Our Top 10 Bestselling DVDs of 2016 & Interview with Tom

What a dramatic year 2016 was for films, dramatic in other ways too, but we’re going to focus on the films. To get an industry insider’s perspective we’re bringing you an exclusive interview with our MD Tom Abell to get his take on a wonderful year of films and the changes affecting our industry.

But first; to celebrate a bumper year at Peccadillo Pictures we’re taking you on a tour of our top 10 bestselling DVDs of the year. We searched the world to bring you the most thought-provoking, entertaining and captivating films possible. Whether they were hidden gems like GIRLS LOST or global behemoths like EMBRACE OF THE SERPENT, each DVD is etched with our passion, love and care. Enjoy.

The steamy French romance that was ‘too sexy’ for most cinemas, careened into tenth place despite being one of our last releases of the
year.

09 CLOSET MONSTER

A beautiful 21^st century “coming of age” tale complete with teenage angst, a thumping electronica score and an Isabella Rossellini-voiced Hamster.

08 The GIRL KING

Our captivating drama based on the scandalous life of Queen Kristina of Sweden, and her “royal bed-warmer” Countess Ebba Sparre.

A brave and unflinching journey into the hidden world of modern, urban gay life. Told through the eyes of ‘slammers’, survivors and the health workers fighting to protect them.

06 BOYS ON FILM 14: WORLDS COLLIDE

Once again the powerhouse that is Boys on Film has been a top seller this year, worlds collide in more ways than one in this stunning collection of award winning short films.

05 BOYS ON FILM 15: TIME & TIED

A sensation as always, the latest Boys on Film collection is our hottest to date. Between a time traveling closet, a 1976 trouser bar and a “zombie infested” sauna, it will have you re-examining your concept of time, age and the ties that bind us.

04 HOLDING THE MAN

The powerful true life story of a forbidden high school romance that was to last a lifetime. Holding the Man will have your heart plunging and soaring. Australian gay cinema has never been so strong.

An intimate film about love, loss and moving on that charts the beginning of the end of a mother’s marriage, the coming of age of her sexually confused son and an awakening that will make or break their new, unfamiliar family. Juliet Stevenson soars in this beautiful British drama set against the stunning backdrop of southern France.

02 THE GERMAN DOCTOR

A lonely 12-year-old girl unknowingly becomes friends with one of the world’s most terrifying Nazi war criminals in this dark, intense thriller. Based on true events, THE GERMAN DOCTOR will have your skin crawling and heart pumping all the way up to it’s dramatic, final minutes. This “Mesmerising and haunting” Argentinian film was a huge success across the board, particularly in stores.

01 EMBRACE OF THE SERPENT

Karamakate, a warrior shaman and last of his tribe, transcends the worlds of men and seeks truth through their dreams. Based on the diaries of Theodor Koch Grunberg and Richard Evans Schultes, the only known accounts of many Amazonian cultures, this extraordinary “Oscar nominated” film was destined for our top spot.

So, which ones have you seen? Which titles do you need to see? Get in touch with us on Facebook or Twitter and let us know!

We’re immensely proud of our top 10, and the contribution Peccadillo Pictures has brought to the film world. Our Managing Director Tom Abell, he’s been in the business a “long time” and knows it inside out. Tom’s taken some time out of his very busy schedule to give us a quick interview about the past year at Peccadillo Pictures, the changing face of Film Distribution and our biggest hit of 2016.

Did you have any idea how successful EMBRACE OF THE SERPENT was going to be?

TOM: We thought it was going to be successful, we knew that it would do well but no, its actual success was far greater than we expected. It was a wonderful surprise that the audience in the UK and Ireland took to the film as passionately as we had.

You’re passionate about finding new ways of getting films out there, what has been your most exciting distribution project?

TOM: Well, our most amazing campaign was for cinema release of EMBRACE OF THE SERPENT – most definitely. Every aspect of our promotion and marketing of the film worked perfectly in every single area. I can honestly say that in hindsight there isn’t one single thing that we would change, and it’s not often you can say that.

I think it’s the best campaigns we’ve ever done and we won the Screen Award specifically for that campaign. Getting that recognition from the industry itself was one of the highlights of last year.

Are there any films that you think were unsung heroes of 2016?

TOM: GIRLS LOST. It’s a very special film with lots of important social and sexual commentary, but at no point is it overbearing or preachy. Every country in the world has had problems marketing it, because it’s difficult to define a single audience for it – do you target a gay audience, a lesbian or trans audience or do you market it as a Disney film with a dark side?

It took us a long time, but I do think we got the tone spot on. Unfortunately, it hasn’t yet translated into sales, despite great acclaim from critics like Mark Kermode. It’s a little gem that many people still have to discover.

Peccadillo Pictures will be seventeen years old this year, how has the industry changed in that time and what have been the most dramatic shifts?

TOM: It’s changed enormously, the biggest change has been the move from 35mm to digital for projection in cinemas, and whilst it was supposed to make things more diverse it’s done the opposite. It’s made it much harder for smaller films to get into cinemas and now allows most of the cinemas to play the same films, which is not just pointless its tragic.

Obviously some screens do offer a more diverse selection of films and we applaud those cinemas who are still supporting non-Hollywood films.

How has VOD (Video On Demand) changed the way you distribute home entertainment?

TOM: While our VOD side is growing considerably year on year, it hasn’t yet replaced the revenue we were getting from DVDs. While we’re maybe not making as much money from it as we were in the good old days of DVD It is growing well and I’m quite confident that our success with VOD will continue to grow. For example we’re one of a handful of film distribution companies who have their own own page on iTunes, we have our own Peccadillo Player which is powered by Vimeo and every quarter our VOD sales on Amazon are increasing considerably, so the VOD side is really moving upwards for us.

Thank you for taking the time to read our blog, you can also keep up with the incredible adventures of the winking black cat on our Facebook and Twitter pages. Check back regularly for exciting new updates, exclusive content and information on our upcoming films before anyone else.

Olivier Ducastel & Jacques Martineau talk Theo & Hugo

Théo and Hugo encounter each other in a sex club, where their overwhelming desire creates an unexpected intimacy.

Leaving the club they drift down the deserted streets of nocturnal Paris, but reality suddenly confronts them in an unexpected way. Do they want to know more about each other? Can their trust be rewarded? Will love come with the dawn of a new day?

Told in real time this authentic tale of love and intimacy is Ducastel & Martineau’s (Cockles & Muscles, Drôle de Félix, Ma Vie, Born in ‘68) most ambitious film to date and a candid insight into 21^st gay life.

Directors Statement:

Olivier Ducastel: As soon as we started writing it, we knew and Emmanuel Chaumet knew that we’d have to stay in what we call the pirate category of films, completely outside the usual circuits of financing for French films. That makes you consider your film differently from the outset. Not only did it give us great freedom, but it also pushed us to see our ideas through to their logical conclusion: there was no point working in the margins if we were only going to make sugar-coated images. Filming the first scene was also an experiment. We wanted to make sure it was possible to film sex outside “moral” (and economic) restrictions. We also wanted to avoid the usual vocabulary of pornographic films that insert close-ups so they can substitute stand-ins.

I wanted a film about the start of a love story. All our films are about love but I wanted to go back to the source. Maybe we were harking back to Jeanne et le garçon formidable, which was about the birth of an impossible love story. This time, we wanted a tale with a happy ending, even if the characters go through hard times.

Jacques Martineau: We were telling a real story and we were all focused on that so it made filming the sex as natural as we’d imagined it when we conceived the project. It’s not just a scene of sexual intercourse and the demands of the story meant that the “performance” of filming actors with erections faded into the background (even if it’s not the same as filming a family meal!). We had to believe in these two people falling in love and the passionate surge of desire. The main thing, for all of us, was the way the characters looked at each other.

The start of love is also about taking risks. Love itself is a risk. We’re not saying that fucking without a condom is proof of love. This is fiction that presents the moment we realize we’re falling in love and we accept that love even if we know that sooner or later, the price to pay may be high. The risk is also there because nobody really knows what it means to “be in love”. You feel something, you decide it’s love but there is no way to know if it has solid foundations.

Theo and Hugo opens in cinemas and on-demand September 9th 2016.

The Musical Panorama of FUTURO BEACH

For those of you who haven’t seen it, the music in FUTURO BEACH is one of the film’s most unforgettable aspects. Much of director Karim Ainouz’s inspiration for the epic and vivid film came from David Bowie’s enduring masterpiece HEROES, which perfectly captures that mood of hope and ambition and danger that the film is all about. Take a look below to see what Karim said about the ‘musical panorama’ he tried to create in the soundtrack:

Music. It’s funny, when we started to write the movie, to picture it, Heros by Bowie always came to mind. I didn’t know then that it was an emblematic track in Cristiane F. – Wir Kinder von Bahnhof Zoo (1981). It was just one of my favorite songs of all time. I thought the movie should somehow have the tone of that song.

I love to use songs in my films and have a special relationship with pop songs, which transport me in time. I have done that with all my previous films. But here I felt we also needed something else, not just songs but
also an original score, written for the characters, for certain situations. I wanted to have a kind of personal theme for them.

And that’s when Hauschka came in. We had never worked together before and in the beginning we were figuring each other out. But it was a great process. I think his sensibility was very precise and very keen to the film’s tone. The first thing I told him was: don’t be afraid to be sentimental – as part of our flirtation with melodrama…

I didn’t want the music to be underlining anything but rather to create a lyrical soundspace for the characters. And that’s what he did.
So finally the film has a very diverse musical panorama – it has original stuff from Haushcka, Aline from Christophe, songs by Suicide, Khaled, Bowie, and Michael Meyer. Once again, it is impure, but somehow, close to my heart.

FUTURO BEACH is available On-Demand and on DVD from 24th August.

Regarding Abandoned Sites and Sexual Discovery

Abandoned sites usually cause curiosity for exploration and adventure. There’s a sense of excitement when we are surrounded by uncertainty and a thirst for danger. These sites also allow for a chance to remove oneself from everyday life and have a moment of self-reflection. From a young age, while exploring my sexuality, I can recall finding hidden spaces and out of the way locations with boyfriends in which, for a brief moment, no one could tell me what to do or who to love, where we could escape society and just be together. We construct these sites for satisfying our sexual pleasures and urges, they’re made into cruising grounds, runaway spots or sites to release our destructive nature. There’s a bridge between desire and death and these will be further explored in the following 5 shorts.

With the release of our DVD of BOYS ON FILM 13: TRICK & TREAT, I look back at some of our memorable shorts from the BOYS ON FILM collections that examine these discarded spaces as sites for escapism and sexual-discovery.

Remission – Dir. Christopher Brown (Boys on Film 13)

In our latest BOYS ON FILM release, we take a look at two young men and a boy who roam the overgrown English countryside over the space of 2 years, in an attempt to escape an unknown deadly virus. The two men are forced to take a horrific decision after the boy’s behavior puts them in increasing danger. These dangers become apparent in the unknown territories these boys are positioned in, the uncertainty of what’s to come and the boy’s display of unusual behaviors which, eventually, become life threatening. Exploring abandoned houses in search for safety and supplies, there is a moment in the film in which the two young men engage in sex, possibly to relieve frustrations or, perhaps, out of love.

REMISSION is a terrifying short about survival in the unknown and the consequences of trust as a tool for life and death, the last five minutes of the film will no doubt leave you speechless.

Boys Village – Dir. Till Kleinert (Boys on Film X)

Set in St. Athan Boys Village in South Wales, a holiday camp opened in 1925 as a summer camp for the sons from families in the South Wales coalfield.

The film focuses on a young boy and his imagination – at first we’re unsure of why Kevin roams the abandoned camp while talking to his friends made of twigs and rubbish. Is he in the process of exploring? Escaping? He has been eleven years old for quite some time now. Has it been years or decades? Shattered glass and debris lay scattered all over and the countless trap falls and opportunities for injury become a haven for young boys and exploration. After witnessing a group of vandals who visit the site in a destructive manner, Kevin’s sexual curiosity is awakened when he sees a particular attractive teen.

Prora – Dir. Stéphane Riethauser (Boys on Film 9)

Prora is a good example of abandoned sites as a stimulant for sexual discovery in moments of excitement and danger. Two teenagers, Jan and Matthieu, embark on an adventure in the deserted former Nazi holiday camp and communist military complex in Germany. Whilst exploring their surroundings they put their friendship at risk. Running through the corridors in a destructive manner, smashing windows and playing rough. The two boys, high on adrenaline, end up confronting their feelings in a moment of sexual realization. The two teens end up making love across the scattered glass on the complex floors. Away from the world and positioned in an empty complex all to themselves, this triggering of emotional discovery is further heightened.

The Strange Ones – Dir. Christopher Radcliff & Lauren Wolkstein (Boys on Film 7)

An unknown destination, a man and a boy travel in search for the unknown. Finding respite in what seems to be an abandoned motel swimming pool, the two travelers are confronted by the motel owner where truth and lies become one blurring situation. On the surface all seems normal, but as the owner asks more questions, nothing is what it seems to be.

Bramadero – Dir. Julián Hernández (Boys on Film 2)

Bramadero: A place where deer and other wild animals in heat prefer to go.

Our final short explores our animalistic nature. Hassen and Jonás find a spot on the outskirts of Mexico City where they seduce one another in a merging of body and mind. The construction site holds as a playground for desire: the positioning of a mattress in the middle of the floor becomes an immediate invitation for sexual discovery. The industrial steel scaffolding acts as barriers between the two men, yet as they move in between the structures a divergence between their raw naked bodies and the man-made barriers is constructed. The uncertainty of the dangers of abandoned construction sites ultimately lead to death, as Bramadero is described as a pole animals are tied to in order to tame them or kill them.

by Serden Salih

An interview with Diemo Kemmesies, director of SILENT YOUTH

Q: The plot of your film is very simple and straightforward. It’s a character-driven piece, but at the same time devoid of heavy use of dialogue as a dramatic device. When watching it, I got the impression that improvisation played a significant role in developing the scenes. Is that a fair assumption?

A: Some people think that we used improvisation, but that’s not really the case. There are 2 scenes with some improvisation, the beginning of the scene on the balcony and the waiting for the toast in the kitchen.

The rest was completely scripted by me. I’d like to work more with improvisation in the future, but that requires far more time than we had available (we shot the film in 12 days).

Q: Long takes with minimal action, natural dialogue, lack of music (except for the end) and observation of the mundane make Silent Youth a perfect example of realist cinema. Was that a conscious decision? Are you a fan of realism in cinema? And if yes, who are your favourite realist filmmakers?

A: When I first started out, my films lacked that sense of reality, mostly due to my background in theatre. Later on, inspired by the “Berlin School” movement and the works of Dardenne brothers, I realized that sense of vivid reality intensified the movie experience for me.

I wouldn’t say that Silent Youth is realistic in the true sense of the word. The film employs an aesthetically-raw style, but ultimately, it is all carefully fabricated. This is evident in some of Kirill’s words. Is he always telling the truth or is he making it up? Nonetheless, while experiencing the film, it all feels real.

You sit together with Marlo next to Kirill and feel how awkward and complicated it is. I would like for the audience to have an authentic experience in the cinema and take away something meaningful from it.

You can see that my film is highly inspired by Gus van Sant, especially in the way he works with time and thoughts.

Q: Near the beginning of the film, Kirill talks to Marlo about his accident in Russia where he was beaten up. With the events in Russia now, this is actually quite a timely subject. Was the incident in the film inspired by any personal experience of your own or someone close to you?

A: It happened to a close friend of mine, but it had nothing to do with being gay or not. He just befriended the wrong crowd in a rough city like Moscow.

I had a screening in Kiev and the audience was laughing during that scene. It has become such a cliché that a western European thinks this can only happen in Russia.

Q: Do you think your background as someone who comes from East Germany has had any influences on your work?

A: Yes, it has certainly been influential. Until I was 14, I learned in the school that capitalists were evil, communism was the future and something like gay didn’t exist. But soon after, I learned that being a capitalist is cool, communism is the past and that my country was sold out to the former neighbours.

After that, a lot of West German film-makers made comedies about stupid East Germans and the evil communists.

When I now go back to my home town, I can see a lot of scared and frustrated people, which includes the generation that barley knows the East German times.

So yes, I have something that drives me to tell stories in the way I see it and I also have a connection to the East European way of making films.

Q: It seems you’ve led a colourful life in the respect that you started out as an electrician followed by your service at the military and your work at a commune in France. You also founded a magazine named, “Blicklicht” and now work as a software programmer. What were your motivations in pursuing a life in so many different fields and how do you think it has affected you art?

A: In a way, I have a typical biography for someone from East Germany at my age. There was no straight way to go. Everything was new and also my parents couldn’t give me any wise word of advice.

Learning to be an electrician came from GDR (German Democratic Republic). The same goes for the army. Back then, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. No one asked me that question before. In the prison called army, I began questioning myself about my future. Soon after, I left and went to the commune in France.

I started to articulate myself and my ambitions. I first got involved in theatre and finally became a filmmaker. I always feel bad about the hours of my life that I wasted away and think I should have done something fruitful. However, my varied life experiences provide me with a great deal of stories to tell. It also enables me to see the difference between a worker and an actor who is trying to play a worker.

Q: What do you look forward to most on your visit to the Iris Prize and what do you hope to take away from it?

A: I’m really glad that the festival is screening my film and I hope it reaches as wide an audience as possible. It’s my first time visiting the island (UK) so I’m very curious about the environment and the people and the audiences’ response to the film.

– Interview by Amir Abdolrazaghi for the IRIS Prize Festival, Cardiff.

Big Gay Horror Show: Peccadillo’s Top 10 Queer Horror Flicks

There’s always been something queer, something camp about horror. It inhabits that weird space between reality and fiction, between fear and horniness, that gay people (for some reason) seem to know so well. The connection between screams and queens might be (without wanting to get all political) something to do with the fact that, sadly, simply growing up is a bit of a horror show for a lot of gay people – even today.

Anyway – to celebrate the release of our latest weird, wonderful horror – Till Kleinert’s relentlessly glorious THE SAMURAI – I thought I’d run down my favourite horror films that dabble in the dark art of homosexuality.

1. Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

Featuring one of the best and gayest hairdos ever committed to screen, BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN is camp as hell. A creature is shunned from society for his despised ‘condition’ and his creator is lured away from his own wedding night by the seedy and eccentric Doctor Pretorius – and forced to create a new mate for his own monster. That mate is the BRIDE, who is effectively a drag queen.

2. Psycho (1960)

I don’t want to pander to the stereotype that every gay man has a warped and warping relationship with his mother, but Alfred Hitchcock’s seminal PSYCHO undoubtedly occupies its own queer space in film history. Plus, Anthony Perkins’ was legendarily closeted and, (is it just me?), he’s oddly hot. A queer, Oedipal nightmare which I bet you want to watch again after reading this!

3. A Nightmare on Elm-Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge (1985)

Out actor Mark Patton (who plays Jesse, the sexually confused lead) has called himself one of the first ‘scream queens’. The tagline for this 80s anti-classic was, quite unbelievably, ‘THE MAN OF YOUR DREAMS IS BACK’. A gym coach gets SPANKED TO DEATH in the shower, for crying out loud. This film is, without doubt, terrible, but, as it’s many times been called ‘the gayest horror movie ever made’, we couldn’t not give it a starring role in this list!

4. Death Becomes Her (1992)

Meryl Streep. Playing a musical theatre star. Wants to outdo, possibly kill her rival (the glorious Goldie Hawn), and live forever. Need I say more?

5. Heavenly Creatures (1994)

The female of the species is more deadly than the male. So proves LORD OF THE RINGS director Peter Jackson’s campy classic HEAVENLY CREATURES, starring a young and porcelain Kate Winslet as the young school girl who falls in love with another young school girl. Enough of a horror film in itself, and it’s this unforgiving blend of dreadful reality with sumptuous fantasy that makes this a ‘horror’ in the true trembling, shuddering etymological roots of the word.

6. American Psycho (2000)

When it’s recently been suggested by a US study that 1 in 25 business leaders might be a psychopath, year on year Mary Harron’s study of violence and financial capitalism becomes more and more relevant. Reasons why this film is gay? Christian Bale is hot as hell in it, especially in that scene where he’s having sex with a woman but blows kisses to himself in the mirror. Reasons why this film is horrifying? Christian Bale is hot, as are a lot of those City boys, but there’s no escaping that their business, actions and behaviour are increasingly becoming more dangerous and pernicious and it won’t be long until they throw a chainsaw at someone whilst screaming, covered in blood, in their pants.

7. Pornography – A Thriller (2011)

Whilst I’d like to wax lyrical about how this is a campy, trashy underground genre flick you love to hate, it’s actually quite frightening. A lot of people watch it expecting trash, sex, gore, and whilst there certainly is that, there’s also something profound, unnerving and uncanny bubbling beneath the surface of this Lynch-meets-THE-FLUFFER puzzle.

8. Vampires: Brighter in Darkness (2012)

Now we’re talking. The tagline for the film is the wince-inducing ‘How Deep Is His Bite?’, but believe me, once this film has bitten you won’t be forgetting it any time soon. Shot on a nano-budget in an English castle, filmmaker Jason Davitt’s achievement is commendable, even though the film is totally, totally mad. Love it or hate it, whatever you do, watch it.

9. Jack and Diane (2012)

This is a movie about a lesbian relationship that could, quite literally, get torn apart. Especially when the werewolf transformations start occurring. I personally think this film is yet to receive the attention it deserves: it’s cute, the soundtrack is stunning, and Kyle Minogue makes a cameo as a horny, tattooed woman-lover so, yunno, double gay points.

10. The Samurai (2015)

Well, this is why we’re here in the first place. Although queer horror always does something new, something original, something you’ve not seen before, THE SAMURAI does that with unfettered, gay-as-hell abandon. It’s a bloody, sweaty, sexy genre debut from cult filmmaker TILL KLEINERT where a wild-eyed man in a wedding dress leers straight-laced rural cop Jakob into a dark, solidly Freudian forest and unleashes a side to him Jakob had no idea existed… If you love horror, love queer, love anything on this list, then you’ll lap this up faster than a vampire in Red Cross centre.

Do-root? The 6 weirdest aphrodisiacs from around the world

Has a chubby man in a forest ever offered you a strange mandrake like plant and called it ‘do-root’? Did you take it only to find it was some sort of natural Viagra? Did the whole town you grew up in then take it, and then collectively decide they fancy the pants off you, chasing you out of town in a Bacchic frenzy of flailing limbs and other members?

Armand and Curly: fools in love?

Armand and Curly: fools in love?

Well – exactly this happens in KING OF ESCAPE – the feature film from STRANGER BY THE LAKE director Alain Guiraudie. It’s hilarious. And terrifying. But mainly hilarious. As an ode to this weird natural aphrodisiac, we thought we’d run down some of the weirdest aphrodisiacs around the world: would any of these get you going?

1. Cobra Blood

It's a thing.

Yup. It’s a thing.

According to some men in China – and other parts of Asia – drinking Cobra blood is the equivalent of switching on a sexy lava lamp and the latest XX album.

2. Wine-soaked water lilies

Remind you of anything?

Remind you of anything?

Ok – admittedly this one stems from Ancient Egypt and so I don’t think you’re going to walk into a Tinder-date’s flat to find him/her soaking their lilies anytime soon. But, that doesn’t mean it’s not a neat reflection of some of our modern dating techniques, how different is it from a bouquet of Co-op flowers and some Blossom Hill?

3. Eels

This makes me uncomfortable.

This makes me uncomfortable.

These are large wiggly things that emit a gross slimy substance when touched. Enough said.

4. Sea cucumbers

Irrefutably terrifying.

Irrefutably terrifying.

These are disgusting aliens which crawl along the sea floor in the far east and consume food with their anus. But hey – who am I to judge? Kahloon (one of the director’s at Peccadillo) assures me these are delicious and ‘very good for your knees’. I have my suspicions.

5. Ambergris

Nom nom nom.

Nom nom nom.

Doesn’t Ambergris sound like a delicious, nectar like drink you might find in the South of France, being supped from chalices by beautiful, frisky socialites? Well, it’s not. It’s actually a hard, faecal-smelling substance scraped from the intestines of sperm whales and then bottled into expensive perfumes. That’s right; we live in a world where sperm whale poo is sexy.

6. Asses’ Milk

This guy likes it.

This guy likes it.

Shut your mind, this is the milk of a donkey, and nothing else. In ancient Arabia and Rome women would rub asses milk onto their genitals as a stimulus, and, if you’ve ever heard that myth of Roman Emporer Nero’s wife taking baths in milk, it was in asses milk, for sexy reasons.

I think finishing on Asses’ Milk is always a good call. So there we have it – my top 6 picks of weird aphrodisiacs from around the world. Just FYI, I have a really weird thing about fresh orange juice. If I’m ever drinking it around you, you don’t want to know what I’m thinking.

KING OF ESCAPE is released on DVD on March 23.

KING OF ESCAPE is released on DVD on March 23.

Feburary’s Must See: Stranger By the Lake

Peccadillo Pictures are thrilled to be behind the critically acclaimed and widely admired gay cinema sensation of 2014; Alain Guiraudie‘s intoxicating blend of bold homosexual erotica and compelling psychological thriller, Stranger By The Lake (L’inconnu Du Lac).

Stranger By The Lake has been praised in countless publications and chosen as a highlight of many must-see lists of the year – Time Out and French film journal Cahier du Cinema, Little White Lies, to name but a few – and it was awarded a five star rating by Empire. It was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, where it went on to win the award for Best Director, and the Queer Palm award. It also currently holds an 100% score on go-to film rater Rotten Tomatoes. Guiraudie – one of France’s most accomplished auteurs- is now on his tenth feature and finally earning his place in the art-house limelight. So what, you may ask, is this fuss about? The reasons are multiple.

There’s the atmospheric setting; a picturesque, serene lake in France during a balmy summer, which also happens to be a cruising spot for gay men. A setting that is at once erotically exposed and secretive. When the film gives way to mystery and suspense, the sense of place transforms from a place of natural, pastoral beauty to something more eery and sinister. Of the cruisers, the film focuses on Franck (Pierre Deladonchamps), a highly sought after cruiser in the spot. After several mindless encounters, Frank swims past Michel (Christophe Paou) and rapidly falls into love – or lust – with him, despite warnings from middle-aged Henri, a fat and disillusioned loner he has befriended by the lake. After seeing Michael commit a terrible act of violence, Franck’s unflinching passion threatens to disrupt his moral integrity.

There’s also how celebratory it all is of homosexuality and the male form. It would be a trying effort to find a more sexually explicit art-house film than this, (yes, even Blue Is The Warmest Colour) and a franker portrayal of gay sex so utterly devoid of any inhibition or apology. Likewise, the voyeuristic quality of the sex scenes, plus the treatment of the suspense, expertly echoes Hitchcock; a similarity many viewers are enjoying. The film also moves effortlessly from a sensual art-house film into a murder thriller. Not to mention, there is somehow humour in there too, in the form of an overweight and overtly optimistic cruiser named Eric, always hopefully trying it on with his superior looking fellow naturists. The comedy somehow blends in expertly well, in a film which you wouldn’t expect it to at all; leading this film to become a wonderful and unique hybrid of comedy, romance, erotica and murder thriller.

We could go on, but it would be wiser to believe the hype and experience this absorbing sexual thriller for yourself, in cinemas from 21st February.