Restoration of a cult movie set in a post-apocalyptic world, embracing science-fiction ideas, where pornography springs from sexual frustration. This is Café Flesh, where in the aftermath of a nuclear event, 99% of the survivors can’t stand human touch and can’t have sex (the sex negatives). The minority, the sex positives, are placed in a position of entertainment for the rest, an erotic-musical theater. The imminent arrival of sex legend Johnny Rico tests a breaking couple.
Imagine the iconic Cabaret reset in a Reagan-era post-apocalyptic nightmare, trading the glamour of Weimar Germany for heroin chic and with a stage filled with pornographic performances instead of musical numbers. In this surreal setting, sex-negative customers flock to Café Flesh to watch sex-positive actors forcibly engage in explicit acts, and the premise is as straightforward as that. Yet the director Stephen Sayadian aka Rinse Dream, who has made himself a name as a creative director at Hustler Magazine, hijacks the world of adult film, venturing into freakish and/or subversive territories. Picture a man dressed as pencil mounting a woman on a desk, who monotonously asks, “Should I take a memo?”, or a giant rat man engaging in a 69 with a girl in front of a crowd of screaming man-babies. The camera uncomfortably turns its eye to the voyeuristic audience, and their dead eyes and gaping mouths get at least as much screen time as the folds of flesh and the mechanical thrusts of the bodies on stage. As Sayadian’s co-writer puts it, it’s a “fuck you” to pornography. It’s not a surprise then that the film flopped in the traditional porn market, before it gained cult status as a midnight movie. Presented in a newly restored digital print. (Anastasia Lukovnikova)
