I have always found it odd that sex, something that is so natural and crucial to human existence, gets such bizarre treatment in cinema. On the one hand, there are the art films that scream and shout out their exploration of sexual taboos, and consequently only serve to perpetuate those very taboos. Suddenly sex moves from the enjoyable to the painstakingly depressing. (Not that I have a problem necessarily with this approach). Or, on the other hand, you get the bump and grind variety that manages to reduce sex to something rigorously unsexy, (and frequently exploitative), and yet is still a taboo – hidden away in curtained video rooms, and dark alleyways. So it seems potentially refreshing that a film like Destricted challenges some well known artists and filmmakers to reclaim sex on film, make some short films that can be intellectually challenging, yet also interesting (perhaps even fun) to watch. Granted, it does feel like an exercise that the Cinema of Transgression/American avant-garde have been doing for years. Some of the directors on show here did it well; others certainly did not. I guess that’s the way with compilation films.

Destricted starts off with Festival favourite Matthew Barney’s bizarre take on sexuality. Hoist opens in Eden-like surroundings with a close-up of a flaccid, black man’s penis. A woman behind me excitedly exclaimed “it’s a slug”. Bless. As the penis hardened up on screen, her companion was forced to say “I don’t think it’s a slug”. Brilliant. Barney’s film showed the man (who also had a beetroot coming out of his arse) having sex with a machine in a way that caused many a male in the crowd to wince. It looked like a clash between primordial nature and modern machinery, and was as visually interesting as you’d expect from Barney. The second film, Balkan Erotic Epic, was a rather inconsequential but humorous piece from Marina Abramovic examining the quaint ancient sexual customs of the Balkans. It was entertaining in an anthropological way. The third, House Call, was a piece by Richard Prince, again seemingly innocuous; a porn scene (involving the doctor and house-visit set-up) filmed in a flared old-school visual style.

The highlight of Destricted, Impaled, came next surprisingly via Larry Clark, whose films rarely display the maturity expressed in this clip. Clark set up a series of interviews with wannabe porn stars, asking them questions about porn, sex, etc. in a way that manages to totally humanise those on display, but also reveal the false bravado, and the insecurities of the men involved. Eventually Clark would pick one, and that guy would be able to choose a porn actress to sleep with. I personally was rooting for the virgin to be picked. The females on the other hand were confident, assured, realistic about their profession, but also again, strongly humanised. The actual sex scene was not only hilarious, but also as a result of the audience having some idea about the two people involved, strongly removed from the usual drudgery of porn scenes. Clark even had his characters put their clothes back on after the shoot.

Marco Brambilla’s Sync, a compilation of sex scenes, followed. I’ve always yearned for more sampling in cinema, and this was a whole bunch of samples combined into one big film (well, a two minute film). Death Valley, a dull observation of a man wanking in the desert, represented Sam Taylor-Wood’s contribution to the project. Visually bland despite its Death Valley location (especially unforgivable given her credentials as a photographer), it was a rather earnest piece of alienation and masturbation.

The final entry came in Gaspar Noé’s absolute shocker, We fuck alone. For some reason he decided to pummel the viewer with profoundly uncomfortable strobe lighting. His point was rather puritanical – watching sex is made to be nauseating, and having his male actor put a gun into a blow-up doll’s mouth while masturbating and watching a porn film was not particularly subtle, nor particularly enlightening outside of a shitty Freudian approach (the baby screams add to this mess). Of course, Noé’s not usually noted for his philosophical subtlety, but this was a reactionary piece of rubbish.

Destricted concludes like most omnibus films: some good short films, some not so good. Of course, it’s hard to see an anthology like this actually redefining the nature of sex on film. At the very least, it remains an interesting experiment to see sex taken away from its usual filmic creators, even if for the briefest moment.—Brannavan Gnanalingam