Starring: Gerardo Torres Rodriguez, Pavel Akindog, Anty de la Vega
Director: Alberto Fuguet
Country: Mexico
New Mexican Drama Always Say Yes proudly declares that is “Contains real sex. A lot of it.” It does, so this description is accurate, but it doesn’t really contain much else. Hector (Rodriguez) travels to Mexico City to seek out an art collective called Feral, for whom he wishes to pose naked. When he gets there, he poses naked and engages in about 90 minutes of solid sex. Voiceover and inane dialogue peppers the relentless sexual material, with bold font narrative also written on the screen, but it’s all pointless fluff padding out what is basically just porn.
This is a film about sex, so depicting the sex itself isn’t really the issue. The issue is that it suffers so severely from Inactivity Syndrome that it feels like you’re actually just watching an online stream via Cam4. As Hector and his multiple partners cavort naked together, we become desensitised fairly quickly to its content and their constant rough and tumbles are about as exciting as watching Last Night At The Proms with the sound turned off. They go through the motions but the effect is gone.
This is observational realism. It feels like it’s all been filmed on an iPhone and the director has pitched it as “ground-breaking sexual hyper-reality” when it’s just some fairly ordinary people being masking exhibitionism with a an X-Pro 2 filter. It’s about as ground-breaking as a Year 9 Drama piece about schizophrenia. You’re better off watching actual porn.
OUT ON 23rd JULY 2019 ON DVD AND ON DEMAND, RELEASED BY TLA RELEASING