Below Her Mouth
Below Her Mouth is a 2016 Canadian erotic romantic drama film directed by April Mullen and written by Stephanie Fabrizi. The film stars Natalie Krill as Jasmine and Erika Linder as Dallas, two women in Toronto who meet and begin a passionate love affair. The cast also includes Tommie-Amber Pirie, Mayko Nguyen, Elise Bauman, Melanie Leishman and Sebastian Pigott. Plot. Set over three days, the film follows two very different women who fall in love with each other. Jasmine is a successful fashion editor living with her fiancé in Toronto. On a Friday night out in  the city with her best friend Claire, Jasmine meets Dallas, a female roofer recently out of a relationship, who is working with a crew on the house next door to Jasmine's . Surprised by the confidence with which Dallas approaches her, Jasmine becomes infatuated with her. The chance meeting soon turns into desire which ignites in Jasmine when she becomes more acquainted with Dallas, leading Jasmine to accompany Dallas to her low-rent loft where the two women soon engage in passionate sex. As Jasmine struggles with her feelings over being sexually involved with another woman, she fears her tryst  with Dallas might end her engagement with her fiancé should it ever become known. The film then shows what happens over the remaining hours. Production. The film was shot in Toronto over a period of three and a half weeks in 2015 with an all-female production crew, and subsequently premiered at the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival, followed by a simultaneous release in the United States on April 28, 2017. Reception. On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 22% based on reviews from 27 critics, with an average rating of 4.5/10. On Metacritic, which  assigns a normalized rating, it received an average score of 42 out of 100, based on 9 reviews from mainstream critics, indicating "mixed or average". Critical response. Diego Semerene of "Slant Magazine" gave the film 0.5 stars out of 4, writing, "The film is an unquestionably pornographic fantasy barely trying to pass as something other than masturbation material." He added, ""Below Her Mouth"s stiff acting and dialogue suggest a misguided "Blue Is the Warmest Color" influence reduced to the sexy aesthetics of lesbian sex but completely oblivious to that which actually animates the film's impossibly beautiful, unbearably smooth, and  perpetually horny bodies." Guy Lodge of "Variety" described it as "a sexually frank but narratively flimsy girl-meets-girl romance that never gets under its gorgeous characters' amply exposed skin." Frank Scheck of "The Hollywood Reporter" called it "an undeniably steamy effort that delivers plenty of heat in its sex scenes, while falling significantly short in dramatic terms." Katie Walsh of the "Los Angeles Times" said: "Despite the female filmmakers at the helm, the film treads into exploitative territory, with the ratio of screen time given to writhing female bodies far outweighing that given to their unique experiences as gay  or closeted women in the world." Jude Dry of "Indiewire" wrote: "What, exactly, is below her mouth? Her chin? Her body? Her entire mind and spirit? It's a fittingly ambiguous title for a directionless film, late night fare that will be enjoyed by just as many horny men as horny teenage lesbians." Home media. The film was made available as video on demand on Amazon Video on April 29, 2017; followed by Netflix on August 1, 2017.