Peccadillo Pictures

Tag 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

Tom of Finland – A Friday to remember

One week on and we’re still feeling the amazing vibes from last Friday, a night to remember with Tom of Finland. If you were there, lucky you, if you weren’t; sit down, feet up, pour yourself a drink and we’ll tell you a story….

Once upon a time (also known as the 30^th June) there was an event called the East End Film Festival (EEFF). People came from across the capital, with dirty smiles on their faces and dressed in their finest LEATHER! This could only mean one thing, it was the UK premiere of TOM OF FINLAND THE MOVIE.

We knew early in the week tickets had sold out so to say we were excited was an understatement. All glammed up and raring to go, Peccadillo HQ headed up the road to the Hackney Picturehouse.

The night began with our dear friends Spirit Cartel serving up some amazing cocktails made with their delicious Tom of Finland Organic Vodka. Once the glasses were dry it was time to head into screen one (the biggest screen we’ll have you know) and get settled but not before an inspiring introduction from the film’s director Dome Karukoski.

As the lights went down the audience were treated to two hours of fantastic cinema and the fun didn’t stop there, as the credits went up Alex Karotsch from Fringe Film Fest was joined by Dome for a Q&A but we had one big surprise up our sleeve! After two questions Dome was joined on stage by no other than Durk Dehner, co-founder of The Tom of Finland Foundation. Fresh off a flight from LA, Durk dressed in full leather was greeted by a roar of cheers from the London crowd. He went on to talk about Tom as his friend, the history and future of the foundation and the collaborative process between him and Dome to bring this iconic story to the big screen. It really was such a treat to have both of them there, something which we’ll cherish for a long long time.

We finished the Q&A with a few questions from the audience but then there was no time to waste, an after party at THE GLORY was calling our name and boy did they do us proud. This was a party to remember, we even had leather Go-Go dancers which certainly got the crowd hot under the dog collar.

The bash was a real celebration of freedom, pride and love. We even got slightly watery eyed when some party goers shook Dome & Durk’s hands to thank them for making this film and described how much Tom and his work means to them.

As the night came to a close, there was only really one last thing to do…give out the prizes for best dressed. The competition was fierce but there can only be one winner however, big shout out to all of you who got your gear on and did Tom proud.

If you missed all that we can only imagine your devastation but we have some good news, TOM OF FINLAND THE MOVIE is out in cinemas on 11^th August UK wide so make sure you visit www.tomoffinlandthemovie.co.uk to find a venue near you.

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.