Caught Looking

Commissioned for Channel 4's lesbian and gay series Out, this was deemed inappropriate for the mid-evening time slot, which cannot have come as a great shock to Giannaris: with its explicit sex scenes, playful annexation of risqué fantasies, and a tone that veers from weary self-disgust to the enthusiastically debauched, the film positively courts controversy. A man logs on to an inter-active virtual-reality computer game. He has four options, each with a different seduction scenario and a cast of available pick-ups. The first takes place in a (black-and-white) 1940s-style waterfront hotel, another harks back to '50s 'classical' homoerotica (strangely Jarmanesque, this), another zeroes in on cottage trade. It's an original, sly exercise in perversion and subversion, wittily scripted by Paul Hallam, and directed with exquisite poise.