The latest film from IFC Midnight’s slate comes from the mind of Joe Swanberg, the man behind the film Uncle Kent. His latest endeavor, which stars Kate Lyn Shiel, Amy Seimetz, Lane Hughes, Kris Swanberg, Ti West and Frank V. Ross, is a film about the sexual escapades of everyday urbanites entitled Autoerotic.
Autoerotic follows four interconnected couples and their sex issues. Since the film is only 72 minutes long you can view it as a compilation of four short films about sexual encounters. That’s the way I viewed it instead of trying to figure out how the stories were connected since I really didn’t care about any of the characters or even notice how they were actually connected.
The first story that we learn about, after you get through the home made sex tape intro, is about a very self conscious guy who is worried about the size of his penis. Apparently, it is very small so he decides to radically alter his life by OD’ing on penis enlargement pills which then creates more unnecessary drama in his life.
The second short is about another couple but focuses primarily on the girlfriend who is a horny nympho that gets turned on by almost everything you can imagine. This result is her taking time out of her everyday tasks to masturbate whether it be at work or on the ride home. Things take a crazy turn when her friend suggests erotic asphyxiation to try and help ease her raging sexual hormones. Now personally, I don’t know what kind of friend would suggest this and then not warn them to practice it with another person in the room but hey, what do I know about David Carradine’s problems (too soon?) The story goes from there.
In the third story, which attempts to push the envelope further, we enter the lives of a married couple, a nice husband and a pregnant wife. We are introduced to them while they are having sex and then learn that the wife can’t seem to have an orgasm, she feels good and then right before the moment of orgasmic pleasure, all the feeling dies. In an attempt to find a solution, her girlfriend says that she thinks she can give her an orgasm if she goes down on her. Like any other straight man, the husband is totally down after a bit of skepticism. Without giving any further details I’ll let your imagination run wild on this comical story.
The final chapter is connected to the opening scene of the film. It involves a horny, single guy who made a sex tape with a woman. He constantly masturbates to the films and now that she is getting married she wants him to delete all the content. SPOILER The only thing I can say about this story is that it involves a homemade fleshlight. END SPOILER End of story.
So I didn’t see the point of this film. Does anyone really want to watch mediocre to below average looking couples having sex? In all honesty, this movie was like a dramatic skinemax movie without the hot chicks. I tried very hard to look at it from a filmmaker’s perspective but I just didn’t see the point, the only people that would really judge this are uptight art house audiences and the only ones that would watch this are people who actually want to see their sexual problems unfold on the big screen. Plus, the acting was just plain boring at times which made it even duller to watch. Suffice to say this movie wasn’t really my cup of tea, but I did give it a fighting chance.
There was one technical aspect of the film that really bothered me and that was the transitions from each story. Each time one short ended they transitioned by showing an elongated shot of cars and traffic. I understood the context of the transition, that the film is moving to another part of Chicago but do we really need to see 60 seconds worth of cars driving around to get to the next chapter of the film? I found it to be a waste of time and rather inane.
The only thing I can say that Joe Swanberg did well was keeping it realistic and down to earth. He wanted to show everyday people trying to deal with their everyday sexual problems but he made sure to choose the really outrageous cases, the ones that probably don’t exists in abundance. Also, I thank him for including a few instances of humor into the film, there were a few zany moments that definitely made me chuckle due to the crazy twists thrown in. I also thought the last three seconds of the film were brilliant and hysterical. It’s the kind of humor I would expect in a full-fledged R-rated comedy.
That’s all I have to say about Autoerotic so I simply will conclude with my rating
Rating: A sensual film that attempts to make you care about its characters but just ends up wasting your time (2.5/10)
P.S. I knew nothing about the film before I watched it
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