The Male Gaze: Hide and Seek

As is usual, there was mediocre and poor in this compilation. It's really rare that a short meriting eight stars appears and that rule held here

Let's start with the utterly dire. "Lolo" might appeal to a certain flamboyant audience but not to me or the majority of the people it's presumably aimed at. Additionally, it made me queasy to see young children speaking such sexualised language and portrayed as sexual beings. This was right off the scale in terms of prurience for an audience that doesn't include me. As a former social worker, hearing young kids speak like this would have raised red flags about possible abuse. I'm horrified the film was even made.

Then the other turkey, "No Strings". This was a sub "Weekend" clone just as boring as the full length film had been. Vapid and uninspiring, I fast-forwarded in the end.

"The Den" dealt with some pretty dark themes, infidelity and unexpected S&M. It's clear the two friends had experimented in this direction before, but this latest time things seemed to go much further. This was a fair offering.

I found the best film to have been "Stanley". The ruse that so-called straight boys use of pulling a girl to be able to get to each other was done here in an original way and in exotic surroundings.

"If only you were mine" was the second best film. Age-old themes of gay guys unable to be faithful were handled here deftly with a modicum of originality.

Overall a poor compilation. The couple of reasonable shorts can't bring the stars up to more than a four as even they weren't strong enough. Don't buy this, borrow it. I'm glad I did the latter.