(2022, 99 min)
Country: U.S.
Director: Riccardo Tamburini
Studio: TLA Releasing
Language: English
SYNOPSIS: What starts as a casual sexual encounter between two strangers, Marcello and Herman, quickly turns into a daring game in which every action is dictated by rolling a mystical stone dice. As years go by, while they keep on playing, the conflict between the desire to be together and the fear of yet another failed relationship becomes increasingly problematic. Will they be able to find the strength to make choices and break the vicious cycle they have entered or will the game continue until fate decides for them?.
REVIEW:
When Marcella (Ananasso) and Herman (Garvey) meet for a hook-up they find themselves drawn to one another after. Using a dice, they begin a game in which they leave to chance how their encounter continues. With each side dictating what they do next, the game continues into the next time they meet and beyond, but is the purpose of the game only to mask their true feelings toward each other?
For a film that centres around sex, this is a remarkably unsexy film. Neither character is especially compelling, while their “guest stars” - one side of the dice instructs them to invite a third into their bed - are a Rolodex of oddness. The episodic narrative fumbles through large time skips, but with each sequence doing little to further the plot, the result is a concept-film that fails to successfully create a story, characters or even tension. And to fail on all three counts is quite a feat!
The script is unremarkable accompanied by utterly bland cinematography. Then there’s a perplexing nude dance sequence in the final act, jettisoned into the midst of an otherwise boring climax. It clearly exists to spice up the conclusion, but the fact that a movie about sex needed to then be sexed-up speaks volumes about the rest of the film.
Vanilla and pedestrian, this is a tedious and markedly untitilating erotic movie that suffers heavily from a Director that thinks depicting sex is automatically sexy. And anyone who’s caught their parents in the act knows that is decidedly not the case!.
-- Review by Ben Turner, The Pink Lens (http://www.thepinklens.com)
