All you are is meat.
I was made extremely uncomfortable by the hardcore gay sex in George Bataille’s Story of the Eye. I was perfectly fine with the hardcore gay sex in Otto; or, Up with Dead People. Maybe it’s because I knew all the man-on-man fucking was coming in Otto, while I was blindsided by the gay content of Story of the Eye. Or maybe it’s just because Otto is a really good movie and Story is cancer transferred to digital video.
And yeah, Otto is pretty great. I expected it to be a big ol’ campfest, so I was a bit gobsmacked when it turned out to be a fair bummer. Bruce LaBruce (whose work I’ve obviously been sleeping on to my great detriment) has the aggressive-queer thing going for him, but he balances that with a palpable sense of sadness and melancholy. Sex and death get conflated, as do sex and butchery; the idea one is left with is that of a true outsider’s perspective, one who’s looking for something real in a sea of pick-ups. Meat’s meat and man’s gotta eat, but sometimes you need something more filling. That’s not to downplay this film’s sense of humor, which can be summed up in the fact that one of the characters is a heroine from a silent melodrama, and most of her scenes play in silent B&W. Also, LaBruce has a keen eye that in no way is harmed by his use of digital video. An elegant late-film shot that I rather liked:
So yeah. If you can tolerate guys fucking other guys, check this bitch out.
