Stroking an Animal

Not much to say about this one. Stroking an Animal is only 70 minutes long. And it fills those 70 minutes with two things: attempts at artsy cinematography (to varying levels of success) and sexy young people doing sexy things like having sex. I’m pretty jaded at this point. I see a well-lit shot including two sets of breasts and one entire penis and just think, “yeah, and?” Where’s the story? Where’s the character? Not in Stroking an Animal, that’s for sure.

Stroking an Animal has my favourite set up for a WLW movie. It’s about an established female couple who open up their relationship with a man! Ada and Mariña first interact with Tomás in the summer, when he intrudes on their date of floating topless in a stream. Then, nothing notable happens with the couple until autumn where they run into Tomás again. They have a threesome and develop an almost but not quite triad relationship. Though as the seasons pass, Ada and Mariña disagree on how much they want Tomás involved. By the end, Ada is sleeping with Tomás behind Mariña’s back while Mariña seems to think she and Ada have closed that chapter of their relationship.

I found it infinitely frustrating how central Tomás was in this narrative and in the relationships and lives of these two women. The movie almost exclusively shows you scenes of the couple when Tomás is there. It’s like they don’t exist until a man enters the narrative to also engage in their relationship. In the autumn chapter, their first threesome hits a bump when a drunk Tomás vomits and passes out. The next morning, Ada and Mariña stare at him, smiling and waiting for him to wake up so he can drink a coffee and they can actually have that most necessary threesome. Ada and Mariña have a pre-existing relationship and are the first characters we see in this movie. But the focus is really about Tomás. These women exist more as an accessory for him than the other way around or than them all being equally focused on.

Outside of the young people sex, Stroking an Animal is a lot of establishing shots and attempts to capture beautiful individual “moments” onscreen. The camerawork is mostly fine. Sometimes it switches over to a digital handheld vibe, such as during the opening credits which I don’t care for. But even when it’s not that, it’s just not good enough for me to care. Especially because this movie is so damn thin. Congratulations on your golden hour shots of the beach or young people fucking. Can we have I dunno, some plot? Nah. That’s not in this movie’s wheelhouse. It’s that mixture of horny and the director trying to Do An Art which completely precludes there being any strong or even notable story. At least the movie knows that, I guess. Even 70 minutes was a bit long for how thin this plot was.

Stroking an Animal is horned up and quirked out for your viewing pleasure. Just like so many films that this one does nothing to stand out from. If there was ever a time where it was artistically bold to film not just sex, but poly bisexual sex, I think we’re past that now. I’ve seen so many arted up threesome movies. It’s actually passe by now. What might have been radical in I dunno, the 70’s offers very little in the 2020’s. And even in the 70’s, some of those horned up directors were still superior to this paltry offering of cinematography, sex and not much else.

Overall rating: 2.4/10

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