The Liberated Libido

It has become ever more clear that the portable video revolution has gone hand-in-hand with an insatiable public taste for voyeurism. Along with bastard children of Candid Camera, such as MTV's Real World or even America's Funniest Home Videos, the independent film scene has responded in kind with a number of documentaries that fuse the exploitative sensibilities of the tube with the amateur-sociologist bent of traditional documentarians. Such films often seem less motivated by the desire to inform than by the raised-by-Hollywood urge to simply entertain – not that there's anything wrong with that.

Sex With Strangers certainly fits this latter category, as what it lacks in thesis it makes up for in interpersonal conflict. Like the producers of Real World, filmmakers Joe and Harry Gantz know that watching other people argue is entertaining. In fact, though the film purports to be about sex, the sex itself isn't very interesting, and merely provides a context for the featured players to work out their issues in front of a camera’s unblinking eye.

The Brothers Gantz are experts in the area of "reality programming," having created the successful HBO series Taxicab Confessions, in which cameras hidden within cabs recorded conversations between drivers and their unusual fares. They also run a website, Crushed Planet (www.crushedplanet.com), that features programming such as First Apartment, an ongoing look into the lives of a young San Francisco couple who bare their lives and sexually intimate moments for a subscription audience. The site also shows clips from a project that cuts to the chase, a 1985 work titled simply Couples Arguing.

Sex With Strangers follows three relationship-units, two couples and a threesome, as they engage in polyamorous "swinging." Each participant has a different take on what they do, and their mindsets range from enthusiasm to jealousy to caution, giving viewers a wide range of behaviors and attitudes toward "the lifestyle," as practitioners call it.

James and Theresa, thirtyish, are swinger poster children, and sex is their passion. They drive from party to party in their mobile home, a kind of mini-sex club on wheels. Their relationship is healthy and playful, and they see no conflict between sex with others and the love they have for each other.

Shannon and Gerard began swinging when each had affairs, and a therapist suggested that they swing as a way to incorporate the extramarital sex into the relationship. While Gerard takes his swinging seriously, Shannon seems to have tired of it, and wants to concentrate on her family.

Calvin, Julie, and Sarah are a trio in their mid-twenties, and display a kind of dysfunctional immaturity in their dealings. Calvin clearly uses both Sarah and Julie in his quest for more sex, Sarah whines and cries at any small display of favoritism Calvin shows Julie, and Julie seems smug in the knowledge that Calvin will eventually choose her over Sarah.

There are revealing, sometimes darkly funny, moments in each of these relationships.

When Theresa considers breast implants, James constantly pressures Theresa to go through with it while pretending that it’s purely her decision. After the surgery, James is like a kid who can’t wait to unwrap his new toys at Christmas, and creepily insists that the nurse show him his wife’s new enhancements while she is still groggy from anesthetic.

Sarah, convinced that Calvin would marry her, is blindsided when Calvin reveals that he’s going to marry Julie, which he disingenuously claims is purely for financial reasons. At the ceremony, a simple city hall affair, Sarah, Calvin’s original girlfriend before Julie appeared, is relegated to the role of bridesmaid. Humiliated and crying, she briskly walks out on the new couple’s nuptual kiss.

An exercise in prurience, the film isn’t deep. But it does show that human nature remains as flawed and entertaining as ever even in the context of a nontraditional behavior supposedly about giving and receiving pleasure.