What to watch: Pornomelancholia
Written and directed by Manuel Abramovich, Pornomelancholia gives us the story of Lalo.
Lalo is a sex-influencer – he posts photos of his naked body and homemade porn videos for his thousands of followers on social networks.
Lalo directs his own life, but in private, out of character, he seems to live in permanent melancholy. Where does desire itself go when life turns into a sex show?
Sex and masculinity is something that Manuel Abramovich has explored in a number of films. With Pornomelancholia, he’s looking primarily at intimacy and emotional connection in a world where sex feels commoditised and transactional.
In this film, Abramovich centres Lalo Santos – a real person playing a version of themselves for Abramovich’s camera.
Abramovich describes the creative process where many real-life conversations and insights about Lalo’s life and experience were transformed into scenes in Pornomelancholia.
The end result has some of the energy of a cinéma vérité documentary, while also reminding us that we are watching a fictionalised world.
One of the challenges that leaves us with is that it’s difficult to connect emotionally with the character of Lalo and what he’s experiencing – we’re observing it. We can be empathetic but this style of storytelling doesn’t really let the audience vicariously experience how Lalo feels about the world through which he’s moving and the people he encounters along the way.
On the plus side, there’s plenty of full-frontal nudity and sexual energy, and Lalo Santos is a very attractive man.
Overall, the film paints a relatively bleak picture of life as a sex-worker in the adult entertainment industry, but it is an effective character study of an emotionally unfulfilled man in a world where sex sells.
Pornomelancholia is distributed by Peccadillo Pictures