They didn't sleep with anyone to get their roles, but...

BOY CULTURE REVIEW: ***1/2 OUT OF ****

Last night, I went to the opening night of NewFest, attending a screening of the controversial film I Want Your Love. The film, written and directed by Travis Mathews and produced by Jack Shamama in conjunction with (Work Unfriendly) porn site Naked Sword, has achieved notoriety for including real, hardcore sex scenes performed by its actors.

In spite of the publicity it's garnered, one has to wonder if that distinction overshadows the story and acting.

Come to Daddy—Jesse's supposed to move home with his father

The film follows a group of friends in San Francisco at whose center is Jesse (Jesse Metzger), a young guy going through a one-third life crisis who's set to move back to Ohio after many years of trying to make it work as an artist. On the night before his departure, his friends are throwing him a going-away party, but it's the more intimate couplings (and triplings)—involving Jesse, his friends and his ex—that are the focus of the story. 

The film is superconfidently directed by Mathews and features completely naturalistic performances from Metzger, Keith McDonald, Ben Jasper, Brontez Purnell, Wayne Bumb, Ferrin Solano, Peter DeGroot and Jorge Rodolfo.

Purnell, a staple of the queer underground performance scene, is particularly interesting in that the sassy black gay guy in films like these is rarely sexualized, yet he becomes a lust object for Jesse's ex and engages in the film's most explicit of many explicit scenes. His delivery of his lines (especially a mini-rant on crabs) is hilarious; in fact, it's his ability to bring the funny that ultimately gets his character laid.

But the film belongs to Metzger and Jasper, who—as star-crossed exes—have an adorable and erotic chemistry and whose fate as a couple is what drives the narrative: What will happen when they see each other again? Will they get back to together? Will they end up together? Should they? Jasper's expressive eyes were made for the big screen, and Metzger has leading-man potential if future producers can get over the fact that they've seen him suck dicks and get fucked.

I also found Solano affecting as the newly moved in lover of Jesse's bear buddy Wayne Bumb. He's a bit of a nag, but ultimately just seems insecure and wants to be in control of his rapidly accelerating relationship. He gives up a little of that during an aborted three-way, a sex scene that typifies the approach to sex this movie has—it's not always sexy, it's sometimes funny or awkward and it's always charged with subtle character-development clues. Watching these people have sex, we are absorbing more of who they are and what they want.

If you're looking to be aroused, you should first make sure you're turned on by unshaven hipsters, tasting B.O. on someone's pierced lip and blemishes. This is not meant as an insult to the actors, who are cute by many standards, but to point out that this movie scores a minus 10 on the glamour scale. Nobody looks like they got waxed, took a shower or brushed their hair. And the sex is presented in a similarly come-as-you-are way. There's no way this film is pornography or even pornographic. It's closer to being a documentary than it is to being a whack-off flick.

As a sidenote: I used to work for a pretentious buffoon whose personal passion was intermixing art with porn. It always seemed to be such a folly—especially because by then (the '90s), any artistic undertones found in gay porn seemed to have been confined to some of the rebellious stuff made decades earlier. But perhaps porn, which by now has almost fully penetrated popular culture, is currently so overexposed, familiar and manufactured it's a less ridiculous idea to step back and consider infusing it with genuine some artistry again. I Want Your Love is not an example of an artistic porn film so much as it is an artistic film with real sex in it. Still, it could inspire pornographers to come up with something other than pizza-delivery boys, bald penises and stilted dialogue about absent girlfriends. It's notoriously hard to turn a buck with porn these days, so why not make a statement if you can't make a million dollars?

While we're talking about sex, to me the most eye-opening aspect of I Want Your Love in that regard was the enthusiastic rimming going on everywhere. That's gonna be a tough aspect of these actors' résumés. But that presumes they have any interest in mainstream careers and reminds me of how we as a culture are now so hung up on box-office receipts and traditional success when assessing if a movie was any good. Maybe it's better to focus on the artful, original creation they've come together to create for our entertainment and enlightenment.

Click here to see what else is playing at NewFest. I'm seeing My Brother the Devil and Jobriath A.D. tonight and Sassypants on Tuesday. Say hi if you're there.