A man rubs his cock against the driveshaft of a 50-ton bulldozer

In a sense this is all your fault. Be careful what you wish for, and all that.

“We’re adults!” everyone cried. “Grown men and women! How come there’s so much violence at the cinema but we’re not allowed to see real sex on screen? We’re entitled! It’s natural! Fuck censorship!”
All valid points of course, but the results of this social protest during the last few years have so far been uninspired.

Lars von Trier gave us a brief moment of hardcore penetration for
his gangbang scene in The Idiots (1998), there were blowjobs in Patrice Chéreau’s miserable Intimacy (2001), and cumshots, I believe
(I didn’t make it to the end, it was so mind-numbingly dull) in Michael Winterbottom’s much-hyped 9 Songs a couple of years back.

Hardcore sex scenes can successfully be employed to enhance narrative – John Cameron Mitchell’s forthcoming masterpiece Short Bus is full of the stuff. This month’s Destricted, on the other hand – seven short films over two hours – does not concern dramatic sex scenes, but art and porn, specifically intending to “explore the fine line where art and pornography intersect”. ‘Art’ being the operative word (it is playing at the Tate). But don’t think you can wield that word – so often used as a critic-proof get-out clause – and get off that easily.

None of it supposes to be particularly arousing, but neither is any of it really very entertaining or enlightening, with only Kids director Larry Clark providing anything compelling.

Matthew Barney mixes sex with technology as a man with a turnip sticking out of his arse is suspended under a 50-ton deforestation Caterpillar truck and rubs his penis against its lubricated driveshaft until he orgasms. This segment is 14 minutes and 36 seconds long.

Brit artist Sam Taylor-Wood’s offering simply features a handsome, buffed gentleman masturbating onto the earth in Death Valley. “I want you to feel the loneliness of it, this vast, empty landscape,” she told The Observer. “What’s going on in this man’s head that has made him stop in the desert? I was also interested in the biblical story of Onan, who spilled his seed rather than sleep with his brother’s wife.” Love, you filmed a man wanking in the desert for eight minutes. Get over yourself.

There isn’t enough space here to discuss all of the films, but a notable disappointment (I worship his two features, Seul Contre Tous and Irréversible) is Gaspar Noé’s contribution, We Fuck Alone. This yawnfest is what I assume to be Gaspar’s version of a porn film, ie, a man masturbating while he mouth-rapes a blow-up doll with a gun, accompanied by Irréversible’s twirly-whirly cameras and strobe lighting. This goes on for 23 minutes.

So, on to Larry Clark and his film Impaled, which, according to the press notes, is an investigation into how America’s current youth generation have had their sexual attitudes and behaviour changed by the wealth of porn so easily available to them.

There’s clearly truth in that, and potential for an interesting documentary, but it is, alas, unfulfilled here. Clark invites a few young American men (aged 19-23) to a room and interviews them about sex and porn, and it’s an interesting cross-section, from shy virgins to arrogant berks. They all want to take up Clark’s offer of having filmed sex with a porn actress. The 63-year-old director comes across as a little creepy, especially when he asks each of them to take their pants off so we can have close-ups of their dicks while they talk. One of them says he’s insecure about his length, and as we get a meaty close-up, we hear Clark assure him, “Your dick’s fine, it’s just that you’ve seen all these porn guys with huge dicks.” True, but having that shoved in your face on a big screen while hearing Clark’s paternal words of wisdom is a bit weird.

Another weird moment comes when the guy Clark chooses for his porn scene is on the sofa quizzing porn actresses. The boy asks one of them when she had sex for the first time and she tells him she was date-raped just before her 15th birthday. Slightly awkwardly, he says sorry, to which she laughs and tells him it’s fine, then Clark, off camera, says, “So it wasn’t fun?”

I like Larry Clark. Kids is still a great film, and he clearly has a feel for teenage life, but Impaled just isn’t illuminating at all, and it really could have been. It is a mildly fascinating, voyeuristic character study, and wins points for its sheer audacity – it’s amazingly honest – but that’s it. Yes, the guy has sex with this woman in a very mechanical, porn-like manner, but it’s a totally contrived situation, with an experienced pornstar, whom he doesn’t know, and they’re doing it for a camera! Of course there’s not going to be any genuine intimacy.

So that’s your lot. Other than Impaled, which I admit has haunted me somewhat, this wretched compendium gives porn and art a bad name.
It says nothing we don’t know, and the tedium it induces is unprecedented. Ultimately, Destricted really is just a load of wank.