MOVIE REVIEW : Illuminating Look at What ‘Sex Is . . .’ to 15 Gay Men

Marc Huestis’ “Sex Is . . .” (at the Nuart) is clearly a landmark film because of the candor with which 15 gay men, ranging in ages from 19 to 73, talk about sex and sexuality. It is entertaining, sobering, funny and sometimes profoundly sad as it illuminates the way in which gays have dealt with their sex lives over the last half-century, enduring the closet and surviving the sexual revolution and confronting AIDS.

On the one hand, Huestis has done a good job in gathering a representative cross-section of the gay community, including himself, Latinos, blacks, Asians, a transvestite prostitute, a porn star, a minister and those attracted to sadomasochism, and then in getting these men to speak so frankly and reflectively.

On the other, he has also chosen to punctuate, sometimes even to interrupt, his interviews with flashes of hard-core footage. This seems a mistake, not because it’s likely to offend heterosexual viewers, most of whom won’t be interested in seeing the film in the first place, but because these clips in juxtaposition with the interviews has a reductive, depersonalizing effect upon them. (Ironically, Brad Phillips, a well-known porn star, admits that his work can make him feel lonely.)

Just when each of the 15 men are so persuasively allowing us to see their sexuality as part of their entire being, Huestis cuts to the hard stuff, which tends to define his subjects in terms of sexual acts, which are being performed by men who are fantasy figures--more often than not physically more attractive than those being interviewed. Yet gays have a need to see themselves, as well as be seen by one another and by straights, as whole persons and not merely as sex objects or in terms of what they do in bed.

This distracting device aside, “Sex Is . . .” (Times-rated Mature for explicit sex and language) nevertheless has much to offer gay male audiences, suggesting that today’s youth by and large are spared the crippling guilts and fears of earlier generations and that gay men can find the strength to cope with the devastating double blow of the loss of a lover to AIDS and their own HIV-positive status.

More often than not, too, the men’s attempts to define sex leads to thoughts on love and its greater importance than sex. (A documentary on straight males would probably reveal the same conclusion.) One man, Wayne Corbitt, admits that sex with his lover, who died of AIDS, wasn’t all that great but that their love was. “Love,” he has discovered, “has very little to do with sexuality.”

‘Sex Is . . .’

An Outsider presentation. Director-producer Marc Huestis. Producer Lawrence Helman. Cinematographer Fawn Yacker. Editors Lara Mac, Hrafnhildur Gunnarsdottir. Music Donna Vioscuso, Pussy Tourette. Sound Lauretta Molitar. Running time: 1 hour, 22 minutes.

Times-rated Mature (for strong sex, language).