Beast

By: buddhawannabe

Remember Derek Jarman? Among his many films, he directed a couple ["Sebastiane, "Caravaggio," both available on the "gay cinema" half of this website] that created a certain amount of controversy. People who like art films thought they were too much like gay porn, and people who like gay porn thought they were too much like art films. Of course, those of us who like a mix of art film and gay porn enjoyed them. Jean-Marc Prouveur might be described as "in the school of Derek Jarman." There is plenty of explicit gay sex (though rather less of it in the first half hour), and the guys are all quite attractive, but the sex is not anything out of the ordinary ? sucking and fucking. It's all within a context of "high art," however. Very slow moving, and to describe it as having a plot would be overstating the case. Despite the implications of the title, it's not so much a retelling of the "Beauty and the Beast" story in gay terms (p.s. if that's what you're looking for, you'll enjoy "Through the Woods", Chi Chi LaRue's gay version of "Red Riding Hood"--see my review) as it is a gay fantasy employing ideas from that fairy tale, with a few allusions to Cocteau's version. The mysterious and evocative photography, situations, sets and costumes--and the fact that there is no word spoken save the occasional whispered "Fuck yeah" or "Stick it in me"--give it a magical, dreamlike feeling. (Any necessary plot exposition is provided by intertitles in English.) I grant that some folks might find this video boring or irritating, but if you're interested in videos that fall into TLA's category of "Fantasy & Supernatural," this one makes the others in that category look pretty tacky by comparison.