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Review

Into a squalorous bohemian loft in Berlin enters a beautiful blonde. Very shortly, she meets a dark-haired handsome gentleman and, very quickly, he's shoved her against a wall and has begun feverishly kissing her. Surprisingly, she reciprocates. After everal heated seconds, another beautiful blonde enters the room and calls cut... even though no camera appears to be running. So begins Bedways, an arthouse treatise on sex, love, eroticism and the creation of art by director Rolf Peter Kahl. Nina, the director (played by the disarmingly beautiful Miriam Mayet), has a vague idea for a film that she'd like her boyfriend Hans (Matthias Faust, the aforementioned handsome dark-haired gentleman) and Marie (Lana Cooper) to star in it. That the director freely admits to them that she isn't sure what she's trying to achieve with the film and that it will require them to be naked quite frequently and have unsimulated sex with each other on camera only intermittently appears to bother them. Nina's search for a vision combined with Hans and Marie's quest to find their sexual comfort zones make up the rest of this moody, sexually graphic arthouse gem.

Featuring graphic sex and masturbation, a lot of male and female nudity and a relatively gloomy outlook, Bedways is not for all tastes. It further complicates its appeal with several issues that, intentionally or not, take the viewer out of the realm of the narrative. For instance, we couldn't help but suspect that Nina is a pretty female stand-in for Kahl. After all, both are filmmakers who set out to make art films that feature unsimulated sex. But, it struck us as quite convenient that Nina is a woman while Kahl is a man. This gender somehow allows her more leeway gaze upon the female form and watch fornication than a man could without attracting ire and criticism. Further, the ease with which Nina finds two people willing to have sex on camera with a stranger for little to no compensation requires a great deal of the suspension of disbelief.

Still, despite these minor flaws, Bedways proves to be a fascinating and quite sexy film. We're not sure if Kahl's intent was to arouse viewers, but he certainly succeeded in that goal. The scene of unsimulated sex between Marie and Hans is quite something and, even more arousing, was the scene that Marie masturbates for a camera in a sex club as her boyfriend and possibly several others watch as she graphically brings herself to orgasm. Plus, the many additional nude scenes from Mayet and Ccoper are just scorching. Overall, those who seek for boundary-pushing arthouse flicks and films with graphic sex and nudity wiill certainly get a treat from Bedways. Those who like their films to be safe and sexless should certainly look elsewhere.

 -- Johan Dhikafays