Destricted

Plot synopsis:
Destricted is an art-based film where seven directors, including controversial director Larry Clark (Kids), explore modernistic views of sex, sexuality, and pornography in modern film. The film features seven short films all of which are explicit in nature.Balkan Erotic Epic (Marina Abramovic):
The first of the films features an observation of old Balkan Rituals. The movie's narration describes various sexual actions that members of the Balkan culture performed. Among these actions is the exposure of the female genitalia into the rain to increase fertility. Other act includes a Balkan man drilling three holes into a small wooden bridge and simulating intercourse with all three holes in an attempt to cure impotency. Other act portrays multiple men lying nude on the ground simulating intercourse with small holes in the soil in an attempt to help fertilize the ground before planting their annual crops.Hoist (Matthew Barney): This movie begins with an unknown image. It is long and slug-like to the eye. It is also covered in leaves, dirt, and other debris. After some time the images begins to move and it becomes apparent that it is a penis and it is growing erect. There appears on the screen a large machine called a deforester. It is then showed that there is a seat fastened to the underside of the machine. A wax coating is found around the driveshaft (located directly above the seat). The man from the beginning of the scene is seen nude in the seat rubbing his erect penis against the wax-coated drive shaft. There is a large gourd shaped plant hanging from the man's anus. This scene continues until the man ejaculates. His seamen is then spread across the wax located on the driveshaft.Sync (Marco Brambilla): In the shortest of the short film collections, Brambilla presents a collage of pornography scenes from a large amount of various movies. These scenes are cut in a way where it can be perceived that one action is happening, thought multiple scenes are being flashed. The film is set to a drum only soundtrack that is as rapid moving as the images on the screen.Impaled (Larry Clark): The scene opens with a young man sitting on the coach. There are questions being asked to the young man by another man behind the camera (it can be assumed to be Clark). The young man continues to answer questions about his penis size, sex life, and the effect of pornography in his sexual mentality. Throughout the interview, multiple other males take his place answering the same questions. The scene then cuts to a close-up of a penis. The interview of the males (shown one at a time) are interchanged as all of them strip nude in front of the camera. Questions are then asked about if they are comfortable with their penis size, their greatest sexual fantasies, and personal grooming. It is quickly revealed through the questioning that all the males are highly influenced in thinking that the images portrayed by pornography is what should be expected in their sex life. It then becomes evident that what is being watched is an interview for a pornography movie. A young man from the group is chosen to be the actor. He is then present when Clark interviews for the female part. Several pornography stars are brought in and asked questions. They are asked about their childhood, their first time, and their sexual limits. The man indicates that he has a fantasy for older women and for anal sex. The women are then asked to strip down and asked more questions. At the end of this interview process, the young man chooses an older actress who was willing to have anal sex with him. She re-enters the room after being cast on her hands and knees. The footage is greatly unedited and no special effects are used. She performs oral sex on him and they have intercourse (both vaginal and anal). The man ejaculates and the film ends with the cleaning of the woman's anus and the man's penis.We Fuck Alone (Gaspar Noe): We Fuck Alone holds a warning that a strobing effect is used and should not be viewed by individuals with medical conditions. The strobing effect last throughout. It portrays a young woman in midst of a masturbation session. She is watching a pornography film on the television as she lies on the couch. She begins slow and works her way up to more forceful motions. She eventually simulates oral sex using her large stuffed teddy bear. She shoves the bear into her exposed crotch. She climaxes. This scene is shared with a similar male masturbation scene. There is a young man with a look that can be best described as in the fashion on a neo-nazi. The young man is watching the same pornography movie (which is made to make the transitions between the two scenes). After masturbating for some time, he takes a blow-up doll and beings to simulate oral sex. After spending time simulating both oral and vaginal sex with the dolls he reveals a gun. He holds the gun up to the dolls head with violently simulating oral sex. The scene ends with his ejaculation.House Call (Richard Prince): House Call takes a scene from an older 70's pornography film and replaces the soundtrack to it. It appears as if the movie is being played on an older television with the camera hovering directly in front of the screen. A voluptuous blonde woman lies in bed and a doctor appears. In the midst of the check-up, the doctor and patient begins to have sexual relations. This last until the film's end.Death Valley (Sam Taylor-Wood): Perhaps the most simple of the seven films, there is appears to be an empty and vast valley located in an unknown location. The camera never moves, but only zooms in and out. A young man appears walking into the middle of the open range. He begins to remove his pants and masturbate. The scene ends with the ending of his masturbation session.

Tags: psychedelic, avant garde

Review:
'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 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.
Through from the ersatz-revelatory documentary of Larry Clark to Richard Prince's House Call, which is quite literally in my opinion, the porn equivalent of Meshes of the Afternoon (whether or not that's a good idea or not is another matter).
I've rated the whole movie 6/10 but we're really moving from 1/10 to 10/10 during different segments.I felt Marina Abramovic's segment "Balkan Erotic Epic" contained some sort of interest, but it felt more like an alternative school history lesson, and lacked any sort of cinematic virtuosity.
Simply put the film is about Balkan sex superstitions of the past.Sam Taylor-Wood's segment is quite simply a man masturbating in Death Valley, what is up with that?
I'm sure something was going on for Sam but she quite simply left me almost devoid of context.Matthew Barney film about a man (The Greenman) 'using' (I am not allowed to write the appropriate word due to the comment guidelines) the drive-shaft of a massive suspended truck is interesting more in concept than in adaptation for the screen where it becomes merely pornographic rather than a thesis on sexual energy.
Quite astonishingly this is the guy who directed Demolition Man.Gaspar Noe's section 'We **** Alone' was perhaps the most interesting of all the films, sex in this piece seem like an adjunct of solipsism (if you want to take each of the individuals involved as masturbators then you can, but for me they are having sex, it's just that we are being shown a visual metaphor of that process, which Noe sees as narcissistic; indeed if you accept the duality then the film is quite potent).
It's clear that he is also passing a judgement, artistically and politically, which I don't think any of the others achieved (although they may have attempted), specifically with his use of match-cutting with TV porn when he's showing the man.With Richard Prince's 'House Call' we have another film that is sonically intriguing.
The story of a woman having sex with a house-visiting doctor becomes psychosexual rather than merely pornographic.I wouldn't recommend Destricted to anyone I know, because it is extremely sexually graphic and people I know would think I was a weirdo if I started talking to them about it.
(Due to the 1000 word limit I've trimmed this review by over a third: apologies if some of the notes on films in this seven-film collection are therefore rather brief.)Andy Warhol once said, "An artist is someone who produces things that people don't need to have but that he - for some reason - thinks it would be a good idea to give them." Destricted doesn't fit into convenient mainstream or even art-house niches, but is more like a Tate Modern exhibit.
Each uses different artistic techniques, and each is worthy of serious study - although cinema audiences' reactions may also include boredom and amusement.The most accessible section of the film (and the most linear in format) is Impaled by Larry Clark.
He interviews young male pornstar wannabees, in discussions that are almost like a shrink session, asking them about their sexual experience, preferences and use of pornography.
The female porn actors interviewed are shown as human and genuinely sensual (unlike the way they are portrayed in porn films), although their comfortable attitude to sexuality threatens to bring out more of the guys' insecurities (a theme that was also explored well in Breillat's Sex is Comedy).
The result is a documentary about porn that is also seamlessly pornographic.The sense of dislocation is felt even more strongly in House Call by Richard Prince (a twelve minute section).
To this, he adds jangling, futuristic music so that, even though the images are very explicit, we are reduced to observing them in a distant, dispassionate way.Hoist, the fifteen minute contribution by artist Matthew Barney, will be no surprise to fans of his acclaimed Cremaster Cycle.
The ultimate, dystopian contrast occurs in an onanistic union with a deforestation machine.Balkan Erotic Epic by Marina Abramov is thirteen minutes of amusing but quite instructional scenes re-enacting ancient sexual rites for fertility, warding off evil and the like.
One of the scenes - where men are seen from above, lying face down and copulating with the earth itself, is reminiscent of the work of the photographer Spencer Tunick who stages vast public gatherings of naked people around the world.Sync by Marco Brambilla is the shortest contribution at less than 2 minutes.
The resulting choreographed collage (set to loud drum music) is like being hit over the head with Dante-esquire force by images that once would have appeared sexual or arousing.Death Valley by Sam Taylor-Wood is eight minutes long and puts a Marlboro man type character in one of the hottest infertile places in the world where he 'spills his seed'.
Taylor-Wood's work often has the human figure isolated on film, as if she views the body in its most revealing moments as a work of art in itself.
The title is a play on the title of the director's first feature film, I Stand Alone (Seul Contre Tous), a controversial story about despair and loneliness and the resulting sexual pathology..
During the Q&A following the film when asked why he used the effect Noe replied, "Because it looks better." The style used in We F--- Alone may not appeal to most audiences, but the premise of the film promised shorts by director's giving their impression of the world of porn and We F--- Alone was obviously Gasper Noe's take on the world of porn.Other engaging portions of the film included Matthew Barney's Hoist, which involved a man having sex with a industrial machine lifted a dozen feet off the ground; Larry Clarks Doc/ Porn, hosting try outs for young men willing to satisfy their dreams of being a porn star; Marco Brambilla's amazing short splicing together frames from his own porn collection.
The rest of the other shorts mixed in seemed to lack depth and were rather bland with the exception of Marina Abramovic's vignettes on superstitious Balkan sexual behavior which was very funny.The movie is all that is promised and is an absorbing take on porn from these artistic talents.
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.
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.
So it comes to no surprise that this is a worst-than-irregular film, and that there is little elaboration and sometimes no originality at all in the string of segments that pretend "to illuminate the points where art meets sexuality".
Gaspar Noé and Larry Clark are probably the best known directors of the lot, but it is experimental artist Matthew Barney who in my opinion has made a visually striking erotic film piece (that deserves a much higher rating than the 2 points I have given to the whole film), that has little to do with narcissistic penetrations, oral somersaults and other jaded depictions of sex.
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.
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.
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.
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.
This collection of films contains a great deal of nudity and explicit sex, yet the most interesting film in the bunch is Larry Clark's documentary, which features interviews with a number of mostly ordinary looking young men and haggard-looking porn actresses discussing their sexual experiences.
Purportedly a series of auditions for a porn flick, Clark's film culminates with one lucky young man consummating his experience with one of the actresses.
Both directors are always on the edge of explicit forbidden nudity (Clark with 18 year old girls going full frontal and Noé by showing a rape going on for minutes) but here in Destricted they go beyond that together with some other directors.This compilation is called an art-erotic flick but all i can say is that some were indeed art, one short flick is just a fast editing, cut every second of porn flicks.
Performance artist Marina Abramovic, daughter of the former Republic of Yugoslavia, injects a seriously whacked out yet admirably straight-faced sense of humor into her "Balkan Erotic Epic" relating a number of peculiar superstitions and sexual practices from the Old Country, illustrated through charmingly crude animation and live action.
Italian Marco Brambilla, who directed the okay Sly Stallone/Sandy Bullock sci fi flick DEMOLITION MAN but also the inexcusable Alicia Silverstone fiasco EXCESS BAGGAGE, edited together a huge pile of split second images from anonymous porno features as well as "risqué" mainstream fare such as Chen Kaige's ludicrous KILLING ME SOFTLY and Martin Scorsese's CAPE FEAR remake into a semi-continuous sexual encounter in "Sync", expressions of pleasure and pain – as can be spotted in a few blood-spattered frames – becoming indistinguishable.
Larry Clark, of KEN PARK infamy, comes up trumps with the misleadingly labeled "Impaled", interviewing a series of regular American boys on their relationship to nowadays readily available explicit imagery, having literally grown up with porn, in a selection process to actually perform with a real adult actress.
So I would recommend it for those who are into indie films and semi exploitation with artistic intentions.Sure, some of the segments are pretentious but take them for what this is: erotic fun with an edge.Highly recommended for those like me who are into erotic features and plenty of sexual situations..
Several other fascinating and funny tales are told.Another great short starts with several young men being interviewed to be in an adult film.
He ends up selecting the forty year old woman - a lady who is outrageously overt toward him, and who most strongly fits the stereotype of an impish porn star.The key things revealed in the short are: the vulnerability and tender commonness of human sexuality; the silliness which comes from all the fakery present in regular porn; what it's like for a young male who's been exposed to porn to finally get to have sex with a porn actress; and the strange mix of beauty and silliness that is present in commercial porn.
This short illustrated several things including that even when we are having sex the experiences we're having are our own.In a final shot for the film a line of men in presumably Balkan costumes are all standing with their erect members, which slowly deflate as we all watch.
That porn and open expressions of human sexuality in film should not be feared.
Destricted is a reflection on sex, sexuality and x-rated movies trough seven director's approaches and stories - Marina Abramović (Balkan Erotic Epic), Matthew Barney Hoist), Marco Brambilla (Sync), Larry Clark (Impaled), Gaspar Noé (We Fck Alone), Richard Prince (House Call), Sam Taylor-Wood (Death Valley).The only film that really stood out was "Hoist", which is a very innovative idea, and very well filmed; however, the images of the crane/perforating machine and their real drivers with their faces pixeled rested credibility to the piece.
If the director really wanted them, why not using actors with unpixeled faces?I found very interesting "Balkan Erotic Epic", a mostly ethnographic piece, which tells the viewer about how sex is embedded in traditional oral culture in the Balkans.
The director chooses a winner, who then has to interview different adult actresses, see their naked bodies, and choose his favourite for fulfilling his sexual fantasy, in this case having anal sex.
Finally, "Sync: is a very short pastiche of sex images, taken from x-rated films mixed with powerful music.The movie, overall, has two main problems.
Perhaps, a series of short documentaries/films on specific concrete sexual themes would have been more effective.The movie ends being a gross pastiche of vulgar images, with hardly artistic value and creative talent, which supposed to be the point of the same..
What we get with this collection is an offbeat tale of a village and their exposition of breasts and bums, a guy and his fetish for rubbing himself against moving machinery, a rather well-done collection of spliced sex scenes one-after-another, an interview of several individuals for a trial-screw for a porn actor's first experience on camera, a jarring, strobe-lit piece on a guy defiling a doll and a girl getting it on with a stuffed doll, a scene from a porno, and a guy beating off in the desert.
This is the UK version I watched, so the scenes do change with the US version, but the idea is the same.I don't know if the idea was to shock the audience into understanding that sex can be artistic, but it didn't work on me.
As for the art of it all, the only piece that I would expect to see in a museum of any sort would be Marco Brambilla's "Sync," the spliced-sex scenes.
Impaled directed by Larry Clark.Larry Clark's documentary about porn is by far the best film is the collected works of Destricted.
After selecting one of the men to be in the film he lets them interview which woman he wants to have sex with.
Sync directed by Marco Brambilla.Brambilla demonstrates his patients and editing skills in this rapid-fire short which is basically a fluid montage of porn sex scenes lasting only half a second or so in duration but flow to make a consistent image.
Death Valley directed by Sam Taylor-Wood.A man walks through the desert and masturbates for about ten minutes.
There it is...Balkan Erotic Epic directed by Marina AbramovicThis short provided a lot of humor which was needed to break up the blatantly raw sexuality of this series (you can only watch people masturbating or swallowing cum for so long).
Of all the art house anthology films you may have heard of (Coffee and Cigarettes; Paris, I Love You; Thirty-two Short Films About Glenn Gould), the subject of Destricted is by far the most intriguing, and fans of Larry Clark especially might be drawn to this piece for his large contribution.
Unlike his earlier works, Clark allows the sex to be fully filmed here, and he loses his artistic flair in letting the actors control the scene.
Destricted is a collection of seven short films dealing with sex, love and pornography.
The best of these is possibly Gaspar Noe's 25 minute film representation of what sex really is.
Made with a strobing effect that is migraine inducing, it would be a great film if it ran about a third of its length since if you're clever you'll know what the punch line is.Larry Clark's half hour interview/sex film is okay but ultimately rather dull, which I think is the point.
(8)'Impaled' _____ An interesting documentary approach, but hard to figure what these opinions of bothered young men and experienced porn stars (only the amazing Sativa Rose did I recognize) are really worth...
(2)'House call' _____ (original, I assume?) '70s porn on an old TV (filmed so up-close, one can see the 'squares' on the screen) with a soundtrack that sounded like Sigur Ros. Colorful, vintage nudity and eerie, mesmerizing music.
I have to admit there were some moments that made an impact like the neatly clipped young men auditioning for the porn film, so sad, what are we doing?
What is Noe doing making it all seem so beside the point?In all Gaspar Noe has to be one of the most sexually explicit directors of the moment, but he does not seem able to depict sex with love.In his films we are distanced from sex like it is strange packaged, a view of a lonely unfulfilled man perhaps.