Destricted

Certainly politically correct, that is a danger sign in any film. Politically correct by focusing mostly on men and porn. This film was almost just like any other porn film. The tiny difference being the "art". Strobe light was the "art" in We f...ck alone (it was way too long. I got the "message" after 5 minutes). The "art" in Death Valley was none what so ever. Just a guy masturbating outdoors. I read on IMDb that the "art" was the fact it was shot in that particular valley. If you use your imagination, you can see art in everything. That is wonderful. Hoist was least like a porn, but 15 minutes of a man rubbing his penis to a machine shaft was OK ("art" and everything) for 5 minutes. In the film Impaled we saw the audition room instead of the "bed". It was amusing to see the young guys expressing their sexual desires. The "art" in Impaled was the bad lighting. I would have chosen the virgin. I went to the film expecting nothing, and I got nothing. A man cannot ask for more on a night at the movies.

'Destricted' is best described as seven short art-house porn films. None of them really succeeds as an interesting mix between art and porn, although 'Impaled' by director Larry Clark and 'Balkan Erotic Epic' by director Marina Abramovic have some interesting elements. The first shows a casting for a porn film, but not with the insecure women often displayed, but with insecure young men. The second shows myths from the Balkan around the sexual organs which makes a rather funny erotic little film.

'House Call' (from Richard Prince) is a vintage sex scene and comes, together with 'Impaled', closest to pornography. Maybe 'Sync' (Marco Brambilla) as well, but it only exists out of very, very fast cuts from different porn films and plays for about two minutes. 'Hoist' (Matthew Barney) is too much art, which becomes rather ridiculous with the sex, and 'Death Valley' opens with a beautiful shot only to continue with an 8-minute masturbation scene. I guess it does catch the essence of contemporary porn.

I have not mentioned Gaspar Noé's 'We F*ck Alone' where he seems to have made a stylistic sequel to his controversial 'Irréversible'. His use of the strobe makes this one quite hard to watch. The film itself, including a doll as a main character, becomes unintentionally funny. His film feels as a failed experiment, basically like 'Destricted' as a whole. The premise and some elements have their interesting things, but I can not think of a real audience for it.

Although i'm trying very hard, i can remember only three segments of the movie. This fact alone might give you an overall impression, despite the fact that i was mainly interested in their authors.

Marina Abramovic offered a pseudo-ethnographic study about the relation between sex and language, in particular bad language, in the Balkans. The result is a literal translation of curses into English. Try the same thing in a bar with friends and you'll get a couple of laughs, but no-one would call it art.

Matthew Barney was on the trail of his Cremaster series, with less costumes and plain mise-en-scène, though. What happened on screen was at the same time obvious and difficult to explain. In line with modern art where the act (masturbation) precedes the context (if any), it leaves you to read-in the meaning you might associate with it.

Larry Clark, on the other hand, made an audition for a porn movie. Due to it's sheer realism, this segment was the only one to make sense, but left me wondering why should i watch it instead of browsing the internet for free porn.

Art aficionados, in particular those into modern art, will probably love Destricted. Others would have other films to watch...

Most of the films in this collection are simply silly. One is at least artistic in the old, wan sense of visual oddity.

There is one interesting one, though. Larry Clark's "Impaled." Its rather clever: young men seeking to get into the "business" are interviewed. All of them are sad losers and that saddest sack of the bunch is selected. He then interviews several women to select the one he wants to screw. They are all pros, and their stories and manner are every bit as sad, but posthope instead.

He selects the oldest; she obviously tries the hardest to entice him. She's 40 and desperate to appear alluring. If we had nothing but her manner, we'd have enough to damn.

He's most excited about anal sex. He ends up getting defecated on, but they soldier on until the end.

Its a great take on the ugly behind of the industry.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

Destricted - an experimental collection of shorts by artists and film-makers exploring the subjects of sex, sexuality and pornography - didn't cause as much of a fuss as the creatives behind it were probably hoping for upon its release in 2006. While this is one of the most extreme films ever to be passed by the BBFC, it had to resort to an exploitative tactic when released on DVD by wrapping the box in a black seal as if what was inside was too explicit to be seen by anyone passing the art-house section of their local HMV. Truth be told, Destricted is no more shocking than late-night Babestation, and probably has just as much to say on our attitudes to sex.

The UK release featured a different line-up of films to the one released in the US, so I'll point out that I'm reviewing the UK version, which consists of seven shorts, the longest being 38 minutes and the shortest just over 2. I started with Larry Clark's Impaled, possible the most interesting film of the bunch. Clark interviews a roster of 18-23 year old males for a porn movie, and asks them about their sexual preferences. In an age where porn is readily available to anybody, it comes as no surprise that the interviewees prefer rough sex and ejaculating onto their partner's face. Shrewdly, Clark chooses the most softly-spoken and sweetest of the bunch, Daniel, who chooses older porn star Nancy to be his on- screen partner. Watching Nancy eat him alive has a strange poignancy to it.

Next up I saw Marina Abramovic's Balkan Erotic Epic, a strange and genuinely funny tale of pagan rituals told by the stern-looking Abramovic who struggles to speak English. The sight of naked men humping the ground and a group of women dancing and occasionally exposing their genitalia in the rain is bizarre and almost Pythonesque, and certainly raised my mood despite how cheap it looked. Richard Prince's House Call is a 13 minute re- contextualisation of an old porn scene, in which a busty young woman is visited by a well-hung doctor, who proceed to have ugly, hairy sex in a pleasantly aggression-free manner. Prince adds an eerie soundtrack and distorts the colour so much that the sexual organs on show looks like disgusting, slug-like creatures.

Marco Brambilla's Sync is a relief at just over 2 minutes, rapidly editing together hundreds of porn scenes to a drum-solo score. It's an interesting experiment, reminding us of the repetitive and formulaic nature of porn. Strangest of all the films on show is Matthew Barney's Hoist, which places a black actor with a gourd up his a**e underneath a five-ton struck, who proceeds to rub his erect penis on the lubricated drive-shaft of the vehicle. It is supposed to be a commentary on primitive man's relationship with machinery, but at almost 15 minutes long, it long outstays its welcome. By this point, I had seen enough flatulent and erect penises to last me a lifetime, which made the next film all the more painful. Sam Taylor- Wood's (now Taylor-Johnson) Death Valley has a man masturbate alone in the desert. For eight incredibly long minutes.

While I thought I was saving the best for last, I was actually saving the worst. Gaspar Noe's We F**k Alone feels like the cinematic equivalent of the director telling us that he's had a shitty day. Shot Irreversible-style and complete with constant strobe effects, the film has a man and a woman masturbate to same porn movie in two separate rooms. One enjoys a oversized teddy bear while the other face-f***s a blow-up doll with a gun. It's a terrible, hateful, and utterly pointless exercise, which, much like Destricted as a whole, has nothing interesting to say about sex and pornography. Porn can be formulaic, seedy, expressive and shamefully titillating. But anybody who has ever masturbated before will surely know this already, and won't have to put themselves through almost two hours of arty nonsense to come to this realisation.