Review of Indie Sex: Extremes

Fun, entertaining cable-made documentary from the Independent Film Channel, focusing on kinky sexual behavior in the movies, follows in the unblushing footsteps of "Indie Sex: Taboos" from 2001 and "Indie Sex: Censored" from 2007. Writers, filmmakers, actors, and movie critics are individually interviewed on their impressions of sexy cinema through the years, with Stanley Kubrick's "Lolita" from 1962 seen as a watershed moment in taboo subject matter (although what isn't mentioned is the backlash that quickly erupted from jaded moviegoers at the time who were fed up with "Lolita" and the controversy of a teenage girl involved with a 50-year-old man). 1967's "Belle de Jour" was the first film to depict sadomasochistic fantasies whilst using a major actress (Catherine Deneuve) in the lead; 1969's "Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice" dabbled in erotic activity for mainstream audiences; "Don't Look Now" from 1973 was, quite possibly, the first commercial film to feature un-simulated screen sex. Curiously, nearly all of the film clips used depict strictly heterosexual coupling and fetishism--and this appears to be quite intentional. When critic Jami Bernard wonders aloud about the sexual frontiers we've yet to conquer on-screen, the absence of gay sex (with or without kinks) seems to be her obvious answer, although it is left unexplored.