Sexual Tension: Volatile

“Much has been said/written/vented about the banning of Travis Matthews' I Want Your Love at this year's Melbourne Queer Film Festival. Many have stressed their disagreement with the Classification Board's claim that the six minutes of sex in Matthews' film did not advance the plot and I'd agree - the sex was nothing if not character driven. What is interesting is just how unerotic realistically depicted sex actually is. Not that it is unattractive; Matthews' film is actually incredibly beautiful in the way that it films the guys getting down and dirty, but it so tied up in the participants, in the case of I Want Your Love two (or three) guys, that it is the facial expressions, the laughs and the unsure expressions that become far more interesting than the mechanics of the bits going up and down, or in and out, or gushing forth. And it is the lead up to the actual act, the will-he-won't-he moments that really provide the tension in these scenes. All it takes is one section of Marco Berger and Marcelo Mónaco's Sexual Tension: Volatile to prove that. The anthology film, with six sections alternately directed by Berger and Mónaco, traces the outline of sex but never actually breaks through. It is a very cheeky 85 minutes of cock teasing but it is also a lot of fun. Each segment takes a potential man on man liaison as a starting point and works it up to the point that it is just about to blow, then moves on. Berger, who's previous films Plan B and Ausente have both traded heavily on sexual tension, gets the pick of the bunch, titled "El Primo". Ausente's predatory star, Javier De Pietro, appears as a young house guest who is taken with his mate's gawky cousin, who tends to lay around the house in his undergarments, which unsurprisingly gets our young hero into a lather. Berger uses his camera and his actors perfectly to capture a familiar scenario: the slippery slope from "how can I sneak a perve" via "how can I sneak more than a perve" to "damn, I missed my only opportunity". It works so well because it taps into countless times when you've been in the self same situation. The same goes for most of the remaining segments. There is always that hint of familiarity tied in that heightens the experience. The best of the rest follows a young guy at a tattoo parlour who gets wrapped up in the tattooist, who doesn't know he exists; from there it is straight guys teaching each other how to better serve their girlfriends, sponge baths, hotel staff with no sense of personal space and personal trainers. Sexual Tension: Volatile is a lot of fun. There is never a dull moment (thanks to the titular sexual tension) but after the first two segments the quality does drop off considerably. Going by the film's Spanish title, Tensión sexual, Volumen 1: Volátil, there is more to come. I'm not going to complain, I'm well up for it. ★★★ Sexual Tension: Volatile screened as part of the Melbourne Queer Film Festival 2013.”