About five months ago, filmmaker Tatia Pllieva made a short film entitled "First Kiss" that paired up 20 strangers for an impromptu, tender make-out sesh. While the concept was indeed provocative, surfacing all kinds of challenging notions about the nature of intimacy—both physical and otherwise—the whole project was deeply undermined by the fact that everyone in the whole damn video looked like "alternative" models: skinny, well-coiffed, not a wrinkle or fat-bulge in sight. Sure there were some "weird" haircuts and unflattering outfits—even a few genuine stammers of awkwardness—but all in all it was a blur of beautiful people making out with other beautiful people . . . which ultimately challenged very little.
These people are at the very crux of what plagues so many—not only those who wrestle with body issues (fat, hairy, bald, scarred, etc.)—but those who take umbrage with the conventional depiction of sexuality itself. Sometimes sex is skin-tight leopard dresses and lilting French accents, but usually it's a helluva lot lumpier than all that, and to present these 20 people as some sort of societal cross-section is a bunch of bullshit. (The most wonderful "strange" combo we got here was a 60-something woman in glasses—but still svelte as all get out—coupled with an effeminate, tattooed twenty-something.)
Well Pllieva is back again with her second installment of strangers getting frisky—"Undress Me." This time, everyone undresses each other, then climb into a wrought-iron bed topped with a gleaming white sheet. And once again? Everyone is a size 2 and beautiful. (Even the grizzled old white dude is jacked.) And while, again, there are lovely moments of awkwardness—the fumbling of buttons, the spasmodic toosh-wiggle when you're trying to help someone pull down your pants—it's all eclipsed by this veneer of conventional beauty.
Give me some lank hair, juicy noses, too-big boobs for that bra, droopy butts, torn underwear, a thicket of back hair; give me the human body in all it's not-so-perfect glory. Is it just too "awkward" to pair up people of totally different ages, ethnicities, sizes or sexual proclivities? Because in "real life" that never happens, right?
The thing is, this isn't real life. It's supposed to be a film—art imitating life or at least making some sort of commentary on it—and I wish Pllieva treated it as such, instead of crafting what is essentially black-and-white soft-core porn.
What I will say is that this project serves as a stark reminder that we're all guilty of participating in Pllieva's aesthetic hierarchy. One of the reasons these videos garner so much attention is because they're undeniably sexy . . . because the people are sexy. Pairing up a bunch of sagging middle-agers in ill-fitting khakis doesn't carry the same come-hither cache, now does it?
That would be a different sort of film . . . but also one with a lot more realness and merit.