FILM REVIEW | Sexual Tension: Volatile

TLA issue a DVD containing six short films about men who do not always get what they want, SEXUAL TENSION: VOLATILE brings together two award-winning filmmakers (Marco Berger and Marcelo Mónaco) for the first volume in a series of erotic short films.

Honours are divided between two directors, Marcelo Monaco and Marco Berger, but the films have a unanimity of style that makes them fit together very well as a group.This first volume is a mixture of the brilliant, and the really rather lame. A rather silly scene between two straight men (The Other One), in which one man teaches the other how to make love to a woman, I found irritatingly puerile, and not very well acted. On the other hand the second movie, The Cousin, was absolutely brilliant. From the moment the camera hones in on the white underwear clad bulge of the young cousin, we, like the geeky, but sexy young visitor, are obsessed with what lies underneath. This was, without doubt the best of the six films.

Also excellent, but in a more light hearted way was the first film, Ari, whilst another, Broken Arms, in which a nurse washes a man who has two broken arms, builds sexual tension by leaving much unexplained, for instance who is the woman looking after the man with the broken arms? And what is her relationship with the nurse, if indeed he is a nurse?

Love, in which a straight man finds himself having to share a shower with the man who owns the hotel where he and his girlfriend is staying is somewhat contrived, though it’s worth watching just for the final shower sequence, and the final film, Workout, in which two gym buddies photograph each other for a couple of girls on a dating app, I also found somewhat tedious in the manner of the aforementioned The Other One. Maybe some people find these straight male bonding rituals more interesting than I do.
However it’s all diverting enough, and in at least one film, The Cousin, houses a mini masterpiece. The set comes to DVD on February 11, 2013.