Describing When We Are Together We Can Be Everywhere is queer erotica is an understatement. This low-budget documentary shot by Berlin-based filmmaker Marit Ostberg features very graphic lesbian sex almost incessantly, making it indeed very pornographic. But does the film have any artistic merit, or does the real sex discredit and overrule all possibilities to make good cinema?
DMovies will often raise this question.
When We Are Together We Can Be Everywhere comes with an artistic veneer that enabled the film to enter the LGBT circuit as queer erotica. The film is populated with poetry and indeed beautiful indoors and outdoors scenes of seedy and derelict corners of Berlin. The sex also feels very touching and genuine. The moaning, wailing and facial expressions of the nearly all-female cast will linger with audiences because they are utterly genuine.
The film starts out elegantly focusing on sounds and body curves but eventually veers towards the more pornographic money shots (the technical term for close-up penetration) in the second half. At first, it seems to have universal appeal exploring diverse sexualities (including a female-to-male transexual), but it then becomes an hermetically closed lesbian film.
It is praiseworthy that the film – and perhaps lesbian culture altogether – embraces several types: small, fat, transsexual, butch and effeminate. Male gay culture, on the other hand, is more concerned with beauty stereotypes, often seeking the mainstream type (muscular and virile). In When We Are Together We Can Be Everywhere bodies are neither airbrushed and sex is never formulaic. Some people may find this uncomfortable because they are not used to such freedom, and they forget that the human body isn’t always perfect and photogenic.
Making a lesbian porn is per se a subversive act. Porn is normally aimed at a male audience, and the absence of the male gaze here is refreshing and reassuring (well, at least for lesbians). Most societies frown upon women having pleasure in sex. The UK is no exception: it introduced new pornography laws last year banning female ejaculation (but not male). Lawmakers don’t want to see girls having fun, it seems.
The film features a electronic and sexy soundtrack by Swedish act The Knife, including the songs ‘Old Dreams Waiting To Be Realized’ and ‘A Cherry On Top’ from the album Shaking The Habitual, as well as a film edit of the frontwoman Karin Dreijer’s solo effort ‘Lives Worth Grieving’.
The 2.5-splat rating above (“mostly clean movie”) does not refer to the amount of pornographic content of the movie, but instead to the level of innovation and taboo-breaking elements. Click here in order to understand our “dirty rating system” in more detail.
Have your say, too! Do you think that real sex in a film is unnecessary and exploitative, or do you think that it is an entirely genuine device. Please vote on our poll and help to answer this controversial and divisive issue.
The Berlin Porn Film Festival taking place every October is a good showcase and discussion forum for such topic and films, as the Festival tends to avoid formulaic pornography in favour of more creative feats.
When We Are Together We Can Be Everywhere is showing this Thursday April 8th at Eyes Wide Open in Brighton, as part of the Celluloid Perversions Programme, celebrating the best of queer erotica. Visit our calendar for more information about the event, and click here in order to watch the NSFW film trailer.
