By Matt Keay.

By In the mid-nineties, long before broadband-speed pornography, the only chances of a bit of the other on telly was your mum’s VHS copy of ‘9 1/2 Weeks’, and whatever you could find late on the four (and later, five) terrestrial channels on the small colour TV you were lucky to have in your bedroom. Consequently, many boys became acutely aware of a show called ‘Red Shoe Diaries’, which for early-teens was the absolute zenith of late night furtive fumbling fodder.

It was titillating, intriguing, beguiling, and came and went in a brisk 30 minutes. ‘Enthusiastic Sinners’, however, is the ‘Red Shoe Diaries’ episode that Kevin Smith never bothered to make. It’s a fairly graphic soft-porn flick with pretty decent dialogue. It appears to be an attempt at the kind of film Burt Reynolds’ Jack Horner waxed lyrical about in ‘Boogie Nights’; a skin flick with a real story. 

The plot is ostensibly a prolonged one night stand between Bruce (Christopher Heard) and Shelby (Maggie Alexander), whose meet-cute revolves around unhappily married Bruce, in his role as a police officer, being called to recently widowed Shelby’s house after reports of gunshots being heard on her property. When the call turns out to be a false alarm (her son, banging bullets with a hammer, incredibly), the pair are overcome with lust, decide to spend the day together, and proceed to participate in increasingly passionate bouts of sex, punctuated by soul-searching conversation. We spend the 85-minute running time forced, rather than compelled, to witness the potential genesis of a relationship, however unconventional it might be.

The problem is that a reason cannot be fathomed why ‘Enthusiastic Sinners’ exists. If it was made to be sandwiched within a framing device like the raunchy David Duchovny vehicle of a bygone age, then why the lengthy witty repartee and the rural establishing shots? If the intention was to revisit in some abstract way the nostalgia of chance sexual encounters, then why drag the conceit out for an hour and a half? 

"Enthusiastic Sinners" Trailer from Mark Lewis on Vimeo.

Any enjoyment of the film rests on the chemistry of the leads, (the only characters in the picture), which is undeniable. Their performances are strong, and the dialogue is delivered convincingly and naturally. There are moments when anticipation of their next round of hanky-panky delivers disappointment, rather than excitement, as it detracts from an otherwise riveting two-handed scene of character-building back and forth.

The feeling of listening in on a couple figuring each other out, of hedging their bets even as they bare their innermost feelings and desires to each other is an aspect of the film worth exploring, but the voyeuristic haze through which director Mark Lewis frames his actors results in a strange feeling of imposition upon the tryst, as if the viewer has become complicit in the affair, and cannot appreciate on face value the thrill of the situation as presented.

‘Enthusiastic Sinners’, unfortunately, is a potentially great short film, grossly bloated into a feature. Even with a reasonably taut runtime, it drags, and leaves you with the feeling that you’ve witnessed something you shouldn’t have. Not unlike ‘Red Shoe Diaries’.

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