In Search of the Wild Kingdom

I saw In Search of the Wild Kingdom at its premiere in San Francisco, in a theater packed with assorted beautiful queers and hipsters, including much of the cast and crew. I realize you probably can’t watch it that way — and more’s the pity, the cast and crew had free sushi too — but you should still watch it, and soon. Director Shine Louise Houston has a brilliant knack for making charming, warm, intensely hot films, and this is her best movie yet.

And this movie? It’s so meta. Dubbed a “pomo-homo-docu-mockumentary,” it ostensibly involves a documentary film crew following around another documentary film crew, which is in turn pursuing lesbians in their native habitat. So it’s a fake documentary about a documentary, which is pretty damned funny, and they make the premise work — the subjects don’t notice the film crews in their bedrooms, because the crew wears black, and thus “blends in.” Genius! Georgia Mann plays the clueless filmmaker studying lesbians, and it’s a really funny role, as her obsession with the subject of girl-on-girl sex — what exactly do they do in bed together? — becomes ever stronger, and there’s a cute subplot with the camera crew, and Shine has a hilarious cameo . . . it’s great stuff. Watching porn in the theater means you can’t fast-forward to the good parts, and I never wanted to. It’s all good parts.

Sitting, watching a film made by lesbians, for lesbians, in a room largely full of lesbians, I felt just a little bit guilty for being turned on, but I can’t help it — like most straight guys, I’m either inherently wired or culturally conditioned to like seeing women have sex together. There’s a lot to like here on that score. The cast is a lovely and varied bunch, from hot androgynous girls to big beautiful women to femmes in skirts to butches with biceps that put mine to shame. (That’s not hard, but still.) Some of the sex scenes rank among the most intense and genuine I’ve ever seen. None of the performers hold back, and the results are extraordinary. It’s also just a great mockumentary. It’s the Spinal Tap of porn.