Review of Interior. Leather Bar. (2013) by Graham B — 16 Dec 2013

In order to avoid an X rating, the 1980 William Freidkin film Cruising had 40 minutes of explicit footage cut from the film, never to be publicly viewed again. In this film, Queer-cinema director Travis Mathews and renowned gay tourist James Franco collaborate to reimagine those 40 minutes back onto film.

Promising to be a portrait of testing boundaries, it all gets lost in meta. A film about a film about a film. It is terribly tame. Most of its 60 minute run time is spent watching Val Lauren stare at things. Franco seemingly gives up, leaving Mathews to film the sex scenes and it doesn't even do the initial thing it set out to reimagining the 40 minutes of cut footage (maybe 5 at a push.) The only boundaries tested were my patience. Another Franco art project gone awry. He didn't have the guts to follow through with his idea, so this half-arsed end product is a big fail.