Tag Archives: Sex

Campbell X and THE WATERMELON WOMAN

THE WATERMELON WOMAN is a self-coined – Dunyementary – a fusion of fiction and documentary style filmmaking. In THE WATERMELON WOMAN, Cheryl Dunye uses investigative documentary shooting on video intercut with a formal fiction comedy drama structure shot on film. Inserted within the narrative is archive footage constructed by Dunye.

THE WATERMELON WOMAN is edutainment. We laugh while being educated about the erasure of Black women in cinematic history in general, and also the invisibility of Black lesbian actresses in Hollywood history. As we watch the film we begin to question what is real and what is fiction? THE WATERMELON WOMAN is the Black actress Fae Richards who had disappeared, undocumented in the mist of time.

The title “THE WATERMELON WOMAN” is a play on the association between racist depictions of Black people eating watermelons, equivalent to the often racist caricatured images of Black women as the Mammy/Maid characters in Hollywood. The title is also an homage to Melvin Van Peebles’ 1970 film WATERMELON MAN. Melvin Van Peebles is credited with starting the Blaxploitation era of cinema which heralded a new vision of modern African American cinema.

As THE WATERMELON WOMAN begins we see video footage of a white Jewish wedding with Black guests. As Cheryl, who is a wedding videographer sets up the frame, a white male photographer comes and tells the contributors to move around to suit his frame while she is shooting. She is of course outraged and tells him to wait his turn. This first scene sets the tone for the ways in which Black women’s stories are denied, overwritten or erased in Hollywood.

Cheryl in the film decides to search for the real Fae Richards. As she does so she interviews various gatekeepers of culture, who are unapologetic in their ignorance about Fae Richards. Lee Edwards, the Black gay man, played by Brian Freeman (Pomo Afro Homos – 1990–1995) is uninterested in anything to do with history of women in cinema, the CLIT archivist played by Sarah Schulman hoards Black womens’ archival assets and denies Cheryl access to the material, the cultural critic Camille Paglia played by herself, who while explaining the impact of the Mammy role, denies there is a racist element to them, and even posits the roles as empowering because she insists on viewing them through her own Italian American experience.

The complicity of white women in power structures is further reinforced when we learn that Fae Richards was in a lesbian relationship with a white film director Martha Paige who cast her in the Mammy roles. Martha Paige did nothing to write and direct roles for Fae that were outside of the Mammy/Maid roles. She instead built her reputation as a film director off plantation type dramas. In fact it is often Martha Paige who is referenced in the history books and not Fae Richards. Martha Paige is played by Alex Juhasz, one of the producers of THE WATERMELON WOMAN. Cheryl’s relationship with Diana played by Guinevere Turner (Go Fish, L Word, American Psycho, Notorious Bettie Page, Charlie Says) falls apart when Cheryl has the dawning realisation about her liberal white racist values and her attempted appropriation of Cheryl’s project.

At the same time Cheryl interviews older Black lesbians who let her know how much they revered Fae Richards, even as Hollywood rejected her, and dumped her when she got older. She uncovers Fae Richards rich and joyous life as a Black lesbian who was survived by June, her lover of 20 years. June is played by the iconic poet and essayist – Cheryl Clarke.

THE WATERMELON WOMAN is a genius film which subverts dominant cinema with a Black lesbian feminist aesthetic through centring dark-skinned Black women as characters and actors. And by placing Black masculine of centre women of various ages as objects of desire and love interests. Cheryl Dunye casts herself, a black lesbian woman, as the central character, a Black lesbian filmmaker called Cheryl in order to obtain authenticity in the role, as well as intrinsically preventing any erasure of Black lesbian desire or bodies.

THE WATERMELON WOMAN is a love letter to cinema – African American cinema in Philadelphia in particular, we learn about those film companies that existed in the 1930s and see the cinemas where African Americans watched the silver screen. THE WATERMELON WOMAN while exploring the invisibility of Black lesbian women in cinema, also creates its own queer archive. There are references to other queer works of art, the documentary elements allow for the use of actual LGBT people, Dunye uses music of Black lesbians like Toshi Reagon and if you check the credits you will see interns like Kimberly Peirce (Boys Don’t Cry, The L Word, Carrie ).

THE WATERMELON WOMAN tells us to speak to our queer elders and hear their stories in order to document histories/herstories/theirstories so we so we know they were there.

Campbell X

MARIO a revealing look at homosexuality in The Beautiful Game.

No matter who I talk to, hardly anyone understands why it should be a problem to be an openly gay professional football player in 2018. As early as 2013, many German politicians as well as high-ranking club functionaries and representatives of professional associations took a stand and signed the “Berlin Declaration” – a position paper against homophobia in sport. We know that there are gay football players, and club-internally they receive professional guidance and management. But towards the outside, the silence is maintained.

Coming out in professional football is still a taboo. The blame for this is passed back and forth. Some say reactionary fan groups are the problem. Others point to the sponsors, who could bail out. Or individual players from chauvinistic cultures who would not be able to deal with the situation. Corny Littmann, former President of the St. Pauli football club in Hamburg, Germany, and gay himself, gave an interview on the topic in 2012. Asked why not a single player had come out as gay yet, he answered that this would be stupid. “Only a fool would do that.” Littmann regards the world of football as a professional field lacking the social competencies to deal with a coming-out.

Homophobic clichés and small-mindedness are still widespread, according to him. On average, a football player can pursue his career for 16 years and changes clubs every two to three years. He is a commodity, bought and sold again as lucratively as possible. An openly gay player would, however, encounter problems when trying to find a new club. He would be seen as “difficult”, even if his athletic performance were high. Coming out would therefore destroy his market value – and with it his entire career. So is everything, as so often in our society, a question of money?

In 2018 the FIFA World Cup will be carried out in Russia, a country that discriminates against and ostracises homosexuals. 2022 will see the World Cup in Qatar, a country that punishes homosexuality with five years’ imprisonment or 90 whiplashes. As we know, football is big business, and FIFA will make sure that nothing comes in the way of that – least of all the gay question. And we will follow both cups with excitement, and we will pay to see the games. In the end, the current status quo regarding homosexuality in professional football is a contract we have all entered into. But the weight of self-denial is a weight that the gay players carry alone.

When screenwriter Thomas Hess approached me in 2010 with his idea to make a feature film on the topic of gay love in professional football, my first question was: Hasn’t that film already been made? The topic was already present in the media, but our research showed that, apart from numerous news features, there was only a comedy dating from 2004.

The great football love story, however, had not yet been made for cinema. This is why I committed to the project. Apart from the topical relevancy, I felt very much like making another love story twenty years after “F.est un salaud”. Since classical literature, love stories that are framed by any kind of forbidden love have moved us the most. I saw the opportunity to tell a truly moving story in the given social context of a modern forbidden love. It was important to me to illustrate this context as realisticallyand contemporarily as possible. The football club BSC YB from Berne, Switzerland, generously supported me during the research and script development phases. During shooting BSC YB and the St. Pauli football club provided us with infrastructure, materials, and their names, for which I am very grateful.

Marcel Gisler

Director and co-writer of MARIO – Marcel Gisler

It’s All About Frankie from BEACH RATS

Director Eliza Hittman and star Harris Dickinson discuss the character of Frankie in BEACH RATS.

Frankie doesn’t really know where he’s headed or what he wants, but he does know what kind of behavior is off-limits in the heteronormative culture he’s grown up in. The web is his only real outlet to explore his attraction to other men. As Hittman describes it, “Frankie’s testing the waters. He’s thinking of the internet as being his channel to a world that might exist a few subways stops away, one that is more adventurous and progressive.” After his father’s passing, Frankie takes the next step and begins hooking up with some of the men he meets online.

Meanwhile, Frankie’s relationship with Simone progresses in fits and starts. Simone, who is also 19, is cut from different cloth than Frankie’s regular companions, Alexie, Frankie and Nick. She has a regular job and is conscientious about her responsibilities. She perceives and empathizes with Frankie’s emotional pain and is willing to forgive his faults, up to a point. “Simone is more aspirational than the men in film; she has a sense of purpose,” says Hittman. “She might want to make it work with Frankie, but in the end she’s capable of letting it go.”

Hittman didn’t write BEACH RATS as a coming-out narrative or a story about someone coming to terms with their sexuality. “Frankie’s an inarticulate 19-year-old who is slowly coming to consciousness about who he is,” she remarks. “For me, what was at the crux of the character was that he kind of knows but doesn’t know. He’s clinging onto his indecision; His answer for everything is ‘I don’t know.’ I think that’s very typical for a guy that age who is kind of incapable of saying anything about how he’s feeling.”

In trying to navigate his competing desires, Frankie makes decisions that lead to unintended and ultimately terrible consequences. Hittman was careful to show that when violence does erupt, it is spontaneous, a long-brewing fury that has found its escape valve.

Hittman spent approximately two years developing and writing the screenplay for BEACH RATS after receiving a fellowship from the nonprofit film foundation Cinereach (BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD, TEENAGE, SALERO), which had previously helped support the distribution of IT FELT LIKE LOVE. To the production executives at Cinereach, Hittman’s screenplay affirmed the promise shown by IT FELT LIKE LOVE and they decided to take on the project as a Cinereach original production. Says production head Andrew Goldman, “Eliza is a bold and insightful filmmaker. She has a unique ability to create a cinematic world wrought with complexities and nuances that few storytellers can capture on film. BEACH RATS is a big leap forward for her and we’re so thrilled to be part of her continued growth and success.”

Brad Becker-Parton and Drew Houpt joined Cinereach’s Goldman and Paul Mezey to produce BEACH RATS and began the casting process in the spring of 2016. The role of Frankie was not an easy one to cast, given the film’s psychological subtlety, sexual candor and frontal nudity. The production found its Frankie in a young English actor, Harris Dickinson, who makes his feature debut in BEACH RATS.

Dickinson says his interest in BEACH RATS was piqued by the email from his representatives in Los Angeles. “They said that screenplay was a bit rough-and-tumble and I might not like it. Those are usually the scripts that I want to read, because they’re unconventional,” he laughs. “I started reading and I loved it straightaway. I felt the tone of it, I felt the pace. The character jumped off the page for me — I was feeling it and reading as Frankie. It’s rare when something like that happens and it makes you really enthusiastic about the project. You want to be that character and you want to tell that story.”

He appreciated the observational nature of the script. “It’s not a typical problem-and resolution narrative. It’s an honest and raw look at a period in someone’s life,” the actor remarks. “We start the film and we’re introduced to the fact that Frankie’s father has cancer. It’s a time for Frankie where nothing is secure, nothing is solid in his own head. His father dying is a weird thing for him. He doesn’t really show much emotion in the script or in the film, he doesn’t react to it in the traditional way. A lot of the time, someone is a closed book and there are these brief moments where the book opens for a slight second and you see the underlying sadness, the underlying hate and fear and insecurity.”

Dickinson wasted no time making an audition tape, which made a powerful impression on Hittman. “The first thing that stood out to me was his very deep voice. But then he had this sort of gangly, teenager body and very intriguing eyes,” she recalls. “Harris’ acting was very subtle and didn’t telegraph anything that was internal. He didn’t transform, he didn’t take it to melodrama. He had a natural sense of rhythm and understanding of the dialogue. It was clear that he was a leading man and that he could carry the weight of the film on his shoulders.”

Dickinson’s upbringing in suburban London gave him a certain insight into the environment he would inhabit as Frankie. Says Hittman, “Harris is from the outer edges of London, which is not that different from the outer edges of Brooklyn and Queens and there are a lot of similar class issues. He understood the world perfectly. It was like he knew these guys without ever having been to New York,” she comments. She also felt affinity for his approach to acting. “Harris is very intuitive. He doesn’t want to talk in depth about the character. He wants to focus more on the behavior. He understands that acting is an act of doing. He’s a very serious and thoughtful young actor, very mature and focused.”

Read about the origins of BEACH RATS here.

Revealing the BODY ELECTRIC

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

Drug Slang A-Z

In these winter months, especially in the colder parts of the world, you might be delighted to hear people talking about the sleigh ride they went on over the weekend. That is until you realise they are talking about their cocaine high.

Since drug use is illegal in most countries around the world, the language and terminology surrounding controlled substances constantly changes in an attempt to stay one step ahead of law enforcement. For example, gammahydroxybutrate is a drug growing in popularity, it is now known simply as G or Geebs.

Drug use is an issue that especially affects the LGBT+ community. In a portrayal of a subsection of gay society, ChemSex is a poignant exposé of the rapid change coming from the intersection of technology and desire.

Here is our list of Drug Slang:

Amani – Magic Mushrooms

Bounce – Mephedrone (Meph)

ChemSex – the use of three specific drugs or ‘Chems’ (meth, meph & G) in a sexual context.

Dimitri – Dimethyltryptamine (DMT)

Exodus – Piperazines

Flash – LSD

Glass – Methamphetamine (Meth)

Hog – PCP

Ivory Wave – 2-DPMP

Jellies – Tranquilisers

Kix – Poppers

Lucy – LSD

Mandy – Ecstasy

Nemesis – Piperazines (Pep)

Opiate – Generally Morphine

Percy – Cocaine

Qat – Khat

Rocks – Cocaine

Skag – Heroin

Tina / Christine – Methamphetamine

Ultram – Tramadol

Vitamin K – Ketamine

Wash – Cocaine

X – Synthetic Cannabinoids

Yaba – Methamphetamine

Zoly – Etizola

To learn more – there is a monthly communication forum “Let’s Talk About Gay Sex and Drugs” for anyone to come talk about how they perceive sex and drug use amongst the modern gay male community in London. It is a wonderful resource to continue the discussion. Here is a link to there Facebook page: http://on.fb.me/1PdIHYx.

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

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?

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

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?

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.

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

4. Sea cucumbers

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.

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.

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.

Sex and Politics with EASTERN BOYS director Robin Campillo

When he was in the UK for his promotional tour of EASTERN BOYS, we asked director and writer Robin Campillo to pen a few words on the complexities of his home-invasion-thriller-come-love-story. This is what he wrote:

“Far from casting judgment on the situation of illegal immigrants, or from being a reflection on paternity, this film first and foremost follows the logic of its fictional narrative. It portrays characters living clandestinely that represent both a danger and a promise for one another. Much like Daniel who, when faced with these young men from the East, oscillates between fear and desire, the film threads its way through ambiguous feelings, borderline, indeed marginal situations, but also, I do hope, through moments of pure jubilation.”

ROBIN CAMPILLO – BIOGRAPHY

Robin Campillo was born in Morocco on August 16th 1962. Because his father was in the army, he and his family moved around a great deal during his childhood and part of his adolescence. During this period, movies became a main theme of his existence. In Madagascar, at the age of 9, he discovered Godard’s ALPHAVILLE in a military theatre where the film was booed. Following this experience he developed a passionate interest for cinema and an array of filmmakers ranging from Jacques Demy to Mario Bava. In 1983 he enrolled in the IDHEC film school (Institute for Advanced Cinema Studies). After graduating, however, he took a break from his film career to dedicate his time to the fight against AIDS. Finally, in the mid-nineties he began a long and fruitful collaboration with Laurent Cantet as co-screenwriter and editor. In 2004 Robin Campillo directed his first feature film THEY CAME BACK, which later became Channel 4’s THE RETURNED.

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.

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