Thursday, March 22, 2012

Review: Black & White & Sex

Black & White & Sex
Dir. John Winter
Country: Australia
Aus Rating: MA15+
Running Time: 92mins

“We’re going to get an adult rating!”

For a film built upon such shifting sands of identity and morality, it’s good to know that at least its much-deserved adult rating is a certainty.

If one of cinemas greatest gifts is to confront taboos head on and make audiences contemplate different points of view of something they otherwise might never have considered, then the debut feature of acclaimed local film producer John Winter (Rabbit-Proof Fence, Doing Time for Patsy Cline) will be like Christmas for audiences brave enough to take a chance on Black & White & Sex. A pseudo-experimental feature that Winter also wrote, this film will be a hard ask for many who will balk at the idea of seeing a micro-budget independent feature that raises questions about the sex industry, its workers, and sexuality in general. “It’s a bit of an experiment,” says one of the characters as if pre-empting the negative “WHO WANTS TO SEE THIS?!?” feedback that so frequently greets local films that aren’t aimed squarely at the multiplex. Still, filmed in striking black and white and structured so as to keep the film and its audience constantly on their toes, Black & White & Sex is an adventurous, if occasionally too knowing, look at a world so rarely explored.

Read the rest at Onya Magazine

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