Those who think that films about sex would be a good deal more erotic if decently talented directors made them may be sadly disappointed by this portmanteau collection of shorts.
They are not for the squeamish. But, viewed as a whole, Destricted won't satisfy even the prurient. Those in the middle may just shake their heads and sigh.
There's the nice if slightly long-winded Balkan Erotic Epic, which matches naked or semi-naked humans with song, dance and nature in a way which suggests that sex has always been a normal if mythologising part of the life force.
But what are we to make of Sam Taylor-Wood's Death Valley, which dedicates almost eight minutes to a man masturbating in the Californian desert? Or Matthew Barney's Hoist, which has another male using a huge deforestation truck as a sex toy? Giggles apart, not much, I'm afraid.
Gasper Noe, who made the controversial Irreversible, films a third male using a sex doll; Larry Clark (Kids and Bully) interviews some American teenagers about their sex lives, choosing one of them to get it together with porn star Nancy Vee.
Nothing is left to the imagination, but you do feel that Clark's own imagination is decidedly suspect. This, for some reason, is called Impaled. Perhaps it would be a good title for the whole film, which does indeed impale itself on one's mind without adding much to the sum of human wisdom about sex or anything else.
Destricted
