A person would have to be dead inside to view this and not come away thinking along the lines of “what this couple has is special, and that is something I desire in my life as well.”
That’s the conclusion that The Visitor reaches in their very nice four and a half star review of MATT AND KHYM on ADT.
The Visitor’s review is full of all sorts of details, which is incredibly flattering to read. It’s a great feeling to think that someone is watching something we made so intently. One passage is particularly:
The word ‘real’ keeps coming to mind. Although the cameraman gets good angles, it is never obtrusive. Unlike the more commercial porn where the actors are in positions meant specifically for viewing and not mainly for true genital contact, this couple really does make love. The grinding together of their pelvises, the kissing, the neck nuzzling. You know this is real, and even though some explicitness is not there as in the real hard core stuff, this is a real turn-on seeing true love-making. (On a technical note, film, not video, is used, which gives it a more ‘real’ feel. Although at first I thought the lighting would be an issue, but in watching it, it is like you are right there in the bedroom with no artificiality.).
There is this idea that when depicting sex, a filmmaker has to choose between being explicit and being cinematic, between being erotic heat and emotional weight. (Mike Nichols, “I think sex in a movie is boring… Sex is very powerful as part of a fantasy… But to stare directly at it is to be wasting most of what’s available in drama and in film.” John Cameron Mitchell, “We tried to de-eroticize the sex to see what kind of emotions and ideas are left over when the haze of eroticism is waved away.”)
I think Nichols and Mitchell and others are wrong.
I don’t think staring directly at sex is a waste, and I don’t think that eroticism is a haze that has to “waved away” to see have a cinematic experience of emotions and ideas, and we began making these films one of the questions I wanted to answer was whether or not sex couple be depicted in a way that was completely frank, while still being cinematic, emotional, and erotic.
Now I don’t pretend that any of my films are on par with Mike Nichols, or even John Cameron Mitchell, in scope, sophistication, or artistry. My films are nothing if not modest in the objectives and execution. But I do think they’ve suceeded (modestly) where Nichols and Mitchell and others haven’t even dared to go.
(From “Matt and Khym: Better than Ever”)