If David Cronenberg ever made a straight sex film, it would probably look like Jacob Pander's The Operation. Simultaneously sinister and erotic, The Operation is less about its onscreen sex than about the idea of it. It's erotic in a way you've never seen before: an intimate exploration of bodies in motion and what the filmmakers call "radioactive sex."
What's extraordinary about the setup and the sexual play of The Operation is that it's shot in infrared video. This is no ordinary medical procedure: a hospital gurney is wheeled into an operating theater by a staff in respirators and haz-maz suits looking more like they're ready to mop up a nerve gas leak than perform a routine surgery. Subtle rhythms slide underneath the soundtrack's low industrial drone as bodies literally pulse with heat, like erotically charged lava, or a wet dream about Terminator 2's liquid-metal robot.
Shot in 48 hours on a minuscule budget, The Operation is a true collaboration between director and actors. Gina Velour, the sexy dominant surgeon, and Otto Wrek, the patient, know each other off camera, and so they are expressive and free with each other's bodies. Velour also helped build the sets and worked on the storyboards with Pander. The video editing is artfully constructed by Pander and company, dancing on that infinitely thin and shifting line between porn and art.
The Operation is the kind of video that can rewire your neural net. Charged with a hardcore eroticism that makes ordinary porn seem tepid and boring, this film will leave you looking at your own and others' bodies differently. The Operation is where technology and flesh collide, and everyone goes home better for it.
The Operation: US$25. (You must send in a signed statement that you are over 21 to order this video.) 210 Productions: on the Web at www.teleport.com/~pander/operation.html.
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