Sex Cells

I'm on the record often critical of Mr. K's stylistic affectations: heavy cropping of image, pretentious "splintered" editing technique, sang-froid men deigning to hump beautiful women, etc. But "Sex Cells" from his earlier Fetish period shows how bad the Brit director becomes when he eschews artistry in favor of grinding out generic crap.

This five-segment fiasco has sex taking place in and out of jail cells, with the accoutrements of bondage and fetish cinema foregrounded throughout. But it plays like the work of any anonymous porno hack, not the proudly individualistic Kendo. Expatriate Dillion Day has two different scenes abusing some lovely Eastern European ladies, while the largely no-name cast go through the typical motions of bareback sex, often executed standing-up in these claustrophobic settings, little better than a standard-issue bondage junker from one of the specialty labels like Bizarre, Anton, or FM Concepts.

Police truncheons make for effective dildos, and no emotional connection or commitment is made by the cast, simply participating in the maestro's mania for close-up penetration shots. Back in the day we used to complain about untalented directors filling their movies (and they were theatrical films back then) with "gynecological close-ups", but that is the cinematic vocabulary Kendo stresses. I'll be glad to return to his daring! Media and other big-budget projects after wallowing in this unrewarding exercise.