‘The Male Gaze: Shadows on Skin’ review – Entertainment Focus

Kicking off 2023 for NQV Media is the release of the next instalment of their excellent ‘The Male Gaze’ series. ‘The Male Gaze: Shadows on Skin’ pulls together four shorts that explore the conflict between desire and reality, taking in shorts from Brazil, Germany and Argentina. Perhaps the most sexually-charged instalment of ‘The Male Gaze’ to date, ‘Shadows on Skin’ continues the strand’s mission to keep telling stories that we don’t often get to see.

Opening with Brazilian film-maker Lui Avallos’ ‘Offline’, ‘Shadows on Skin’ wastes no time when it comes to setting the tone for what to expect from this collection. Two neighbours who have never met one another before, meet following an Internet connection outage. The two men have had a relationship online, with one of them sharing his sexual exploits on camera, and after meeting in the real world, they decide to leave the city together and see what life outside it is like. It soon becomes evident that the sexual energy between them may not necessarily translate into anything more, and it’s a timely comment on the connection people can feel with someone they’ve never met based solely on their looks.

Julian Dieterich’s ‘Hedon’, takes us to Germany where young man Fynn seeks out sexual encounters throughout the night with a variety of men. With pornography so easily accessible these days, it’s easy to see where Dieterich drew his inspiration from. Fynn moves from one sexual encounter to the next, struggling to satisfy his desire and his actions becoming more extreme each time. If Dieterich is making a comment on how pornography has desensitised us, and made some people’s appetites border on the dangerous, then he encapsulates it well here. Fynn’s encounter with Tom, his final of the night, threatens to take him past a very serious line but you wonder if, at that point, he is even aware or cares.

Argentinian film-makers Nicolás Alan Medina and Lucía Rivera López bring to life many a gay man’s fantasy in the sexually electric ‘Adan and Esteban’. The two former school classmates return home from a night of partying with one much worse for wear than the other. Once they settle down and climb into bed together to sleep off the alcohol, the very nature of their friendship is called into question. Is there something more between the two men or is it just a longing on the part of one of them? What follows is surprising and it shines a spotlight on the idea that sexual fluidity may be more common than many of us think.

The final short on the collection is Brazilian director Marcelo Grabowsky’s ‘Private Photos’. This is the highlight on this release and it’s a real exploration of fantasy versus reality. A couple who has been together for a while decide to invite another man into their bedroom to reignite the dying spark of their relationship. What seems a good idea at the time, soon causes further problems as jealousy rears its ugly head and the couple is pushed to be honest about the state of their relationship. Sex without strings is never just that, and for the couple in this short it takes them in a direction they didn’t anticipate, although to the viewer it feels inevitable.

‘The Male Gaze: Shadows on Skin’ is a bold and unflinching collection of shorts, offering unique views of gay men’s attitudes to sex and relationships. Beneath all of us there are desires, often never revealed, but ‘Shadows on Skin’ pulls them to the surface and shows how they can impact on us. Sizzling, explicit and thought-provoking, these films take you beyond the outer layer we show to the world and reveal what can happen if you allow yourself to be honest.

Cast: Julio Oliveira, Lui Avallos, Tanju Bilir, Saladin Dellers, Peter Kotthaus, David Hugo Schmitz, Gabriel Miner, Santiago Leguizamo​, Lucas Galvino, Vinicius Neri, Antonio Miano Directors: Lui Avallos, Julian Dieterich, Nicolás Alan Medina, Lucía Rivera López, Marcelo Grabowsky Certificate: 18 Duration: Released by: NQV Media Release date: 27th February 2022