Joe Swanberg & Adam Wingard's Autoerotic is a playful study of sexual vices, fetishes, and desires, following the lives of four interconnected Chicago couples as they navigate the murky waters of sexual exploration. An honest and raw portrait of sexuality in contemporary America, Autoerotic is a film that really captures the social stigma and inherent awkwardness that can exist when attempting to express one's own sexuality, revealing how difficult it can be to express oneself even around one's own sexual partner. Autoerotic is a film that shot with a real weight to its photography, using surprisingly complex compositions that attempt to visual emote the feeling of its characters. There is almost a voyeuristic quality to the whole experience, as the viewer is given an front row seat to the various sexual desires, fetishes, and difficulties these four couples experience, though i'd never call the film particularly sexy or stimulating in that way. Autoerotic explores gender roles while simultaneously skewering their inherent bias from segment to segment, as the film is intent on displaying a wide variety of sexual liberation that can exist in both male and female characters. While Autoerotic's subject matter and craft at times make the film sound painfully dense, Swanberg & Wingard keep the tone of the film quietly comedic, finding the humor in the vast array of human behavior implemented when it comes to sexual pleasure. While the lighter, comedic tone is bound to turn some viewers off, I'd argue it makes Autoerotic less judgmental and easier to digest, though it certainly never reaches the profound heights that some viewers will demand. Joe Swanberg & Adam Wingard's Autoerotic is more an interesting experiment than fully-realized feature, being a playful, comedic exploration of sexuality which still manages to offer a few compelling insights.
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AuthorLove of all things cinema brought me here. Archives
June 2023
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