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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (March 3, 2006)
36 iUStlOUt MARCH 3. 2006 eatingout eatingout eatingout eatingout se 6th ash film Anal Probes breakfast & lunch J&M cafe Come on down to Russell Street for home-style scratch cookin9, and all-naturally raised meats. ©S 503 230 0463 Finding a date just got a whole lot easier Cafe & D e 1 DINE 1 N TAKE 0 U T The Galleria features rotating exhibits of original art from local artists. 3807 N. Mississippi Avenue S03-284-6200 • Mon-Sat 11-9 s. GREAT STEAK GOOD VALUE ATTENTIVE SERVICE OBVIOUSLY. WE RE NOT A CHAIN y . For over 50 years, Sayler’s has keen serving Portland families with what you might expect: great food at a reasonable price served with attention and respect. We’re not a national chain of steak houses. Then again, we never aspired to be one. OLD COUXTEY QTCBQI lost 11 & S.E. Stark • (503) 252-4171 American documentarian, French philosopher put sex under the microscope Sex/Life in L.A. Part 2: Cycles of Porn Fans of the gay porn documentary—of which there seem to he plenty these days, as if we’re in a rush to get them all out before the Bush regime throws us in prison—might remember Jochen Hick’s 1998 film Sex/Life in L.A. Hick, a hunky porn fan from Germany, took us inside the gay porn world, interviewing stars like Cole Tucker and Matt Bradshaw, various hustlers, former Madonna boy toy Tony Ward (who famously mas turbated in a bathtub) and other denizens of this rather grim world. Now Hick is back with a sequel that updates us on some of the guys from the first film and tosses in a few new subjects. Tucker seems to be a secretary now, and horse-hung Bradshaw lives rather pathetically with his sister in the South. (He survived post-porn by decorating drug dealers’ houses.) The hustlers of the first film have been replaced by their cyber-era counterparts: hotties in an Internet sex house rigged up with cameras to docu ment their every little move. Unfortunately, like its sub ject, this documentary soon becomes tedious, and finally numbing, as the same tired stories of “the hottest guy” and “that great orgy” appear over and over. Ultimately it’s all about self-delusion and failed dreams, not to mention wilting hard-ons. Most of Hick’s sub jects are just not that interest ing. But I suppose Hick might argue that’s the point. There’s plenty of sex here, including penetration. Scenes in the Internet sex house and on the set of Hot Desert Knights’ films show plenty of action, though it seems more perfunctory than passionate, despite the illicit thrill of bare- hacking. The sense of futility and fleeting charms that ripples through this world is in fact everywhere evident here. Hustler Kevin Kramer spends endless time trying to hook up as his beau ty begins to fade, the boys in the sex house talk unconvincingly about their dreams of fame, and a cautionary tale documents one of pom’s casual ties, the gorgeous John Garwood. Hick appears on screen to lament the total commodification of gay sex through pom. Someone should tell him ’twas ever thus, since the first commercial pom film was made, taking it out of the hands of amateurs privately documenting their hot trysts for the sheer joy of it and making it the business behemoth it became. —Gary Morris Anatomy of Hell For filmmaker Catherine Breillat (Fat Girl, Sex Is Comedy), sex is not a moral, social, interpersonal or psychological issue so much as it is a philoso phical one. Her latest provocation, Anaanny of Hell, is the most concise, confrontational example yet of her ongoing post-feminist dissection of all the troubling below-the-waist matters disguised by the politeness and productivity (not to mention clothing) of society. It’s French in a way something like Amelie could never be, so alien to our current sexually moralistic cultural context that it gives new meaning to the term “foreign film.” The plot is derived from Breillat’s novel Pomocratie: A handsome patron of a gay disco (real-life straight porn star Rocco Siffredi) finds a woman (Amira Casar) in : the bathroom who has just feebly slashed her wrist (“because I’m a woman,” she explains). After her minor injury is treated, she offers to pay him to “watch me where I’m unwatch- abie.” During the next four nights, the woman’s isolat ed villa becomes the arena where they verbally and physically attempt to dis cover and articulate the meaning of sex and gender (shades of Last Tango in Paris). Exhibitionism and graphic rhetorical dialogue rapidly give way to elabo rate, thorough sexual exploration. The camera is often virtually a gynecolog ical instrument; there is no female orifice or fluid neglected by Breillat’s trademark serene, stark visual compositions. Though the film non chalantly opens on an image of gay sex and is thoroughly accepting of homosexuality, Anatomy of Hell's sexual interaction and intermittent severe anti nomy between a gay man and a woman—the exact opposite of the Will & Grace approach—might disturb some queer viewers. But “political incorrect ness” doesn’t mean anything here. It’s clear that any pro-or-con perceptions of sex are, in Breillat’s view, irrelevant; she’s simply being intellectually exacting of herself, the audience and the world. If the film seems unpleasant or excessive, Breillat is challeng ing us to ponder why that should be, to gauge and interrogate our own reactions. Anatomy of Hell is difficult but ultimately successful; it precisely and systematically attains its goal of confronting disgust ed viewers with their own hypocrisy. —Christopher McQuam ©
