Angels of Sex (2012)

a puzzle. this is the first definition. and, maybe, the best. because it is a love story in same measure like a film about dance, friendship, youth, choices. simple. and honest. and strange. not for the sentimental triangle but for the effort to contain each ingredient of a story full of details, sounds, colors and characters who remind ordinary people, situations and relations. a film about life. in honest manner. simple. and seductive for that. nothing surprising. nothing new. but enough for a beautiful film.

Seriously.. a relationship with just two people at times can be trying enough. Add a third person and you now have four relationships within the triangle.. two male-female, one male-male, and another male-female-male. Yea, that's sure to work for a good length of time. These kinds of films are annoying for they spend the entire time working on the setup of the love triangle. What would be much more interesting is to see how it would go forward from the initial stage of love-intoxication to real life circumstances. As inevitably one of the three 'pairs' is going to wind up being more 'exclusive' and in so doing, alienating the third party. Or one of the three many wanna go outside the little group for a fourth! The world's breakup rate is a 'majority of the time'... this just way increases the odds.

Lot to mention but let me say first off I do not consider this a "gay film." Yes, there is a male/male gay relationship that figures prominently. Lesbians are left out here. (You remember lesbians, right? Gay women.) Anyway, what you do have is a bi-sexual tale of swapping and loving that isn't a bad story, but one that takes a number of detours along the way. Then gets completely lost at the end.They could have easily cut 20 minutes plus out of this film and not lost a thing. Nor does it bother me that the sexual scenes between straights are somewhat more graphic than those depicting gay men. Why does this bother people so? If you are looking for porn just go find it. It's free and it's everywhere.To be honest, I subscribe to the "less is more" theory. I want the director (and the screenwriters) to leave room for my personal imagination. I want to fill in the blanks romantically. Stop turning me into a cheap peeping Tom sitting in the Peanut Gallery and let me become an extension of every scene---sexual and otherwise. Sometimes with modern film I feel like I'm just a circus prop.There are several side characters that just slow things down. The whole notion of these young people working to put out a magazine is treated almost as an afterthought.But the worst of all is the entire 3-way plot line. That both men and women can exist in this kind of 3-way arrangement is ridiculous. Human frailty being what it is, it just never works out. That's why so called "swingers" have to continually look for new partners. In this script, the young woman is at first repulsed by the idea of sharing her boyfriend with a man. In a matter of 30 minutes she's not only accepted that arrangement, she's joining in between them. Theatrical license is one thing. This is silly.

This film totally blew me away! Maybe it's my age (72) but this film was really a shock. I sat there with my mouth open thinking am I really seeing what I am seeing? There's nothing worse than the idea that time has passed you by and you are not plugged in to current ideas but this film really showed me how little I know about the world as it exists today and probably how it has always existed. Sure, in my youth I had fun and did things I would never do again but always under the cloud of Catholic guilt which in this film does not even remotely rear its ugly head and we're talking about Spain one of the most Catholic countries on the planet. Everything about this film is unique as far as I am concerned. It seems to me that it has established a new threshold in terms of sex, opening the door for other filmmakers to expand sexual horizons in ways never seen before.