X

What an odd movie this was, sometimes in ways I don’t even know how to express. Though I can perfectly express that I saw a less than ideal version of X. I saw the “clean” version of the film. All swears were bleeped, nudity was blurred and the film’s runtime was about ten minutes shorter than what’s listed on IMDb. Right off the bat, this is weird to me. X is a movie about covert sex parties and voyeurism. Why are we making a neutered version of that? While I didn’t see the film in its original, unfiltered form, I also don’t think that would largely change my thoughts on the film. I doubt that missing ten minutes or presence of some shots of nipples would somehow transform the hour and 57 minutes of film I did see.

The Foundation is some sort of secret sex society. Attendees are given password, masks and take on false names of chess positions such as E7 and B5 for the duration of Foundation events. A woman named Christian runs The Foundation. But her true joy is not the sex parties. Instead, Christian watches footage from a secret camera she’s installed in one of the bathrooms. Her kink is seeing people in their most private bathroom moments. As the film begins, a new woman attends a party at The Foundation. Stella lacks strict knowledge of Foundation traditions and isn’t wholly upfront about her past or her connection to The Foundation. Regardless, Christian takes an interest. However, Christian has numerous hang ups about traditional sex and relationships. Plus, there’s the ever-present threat that someone will discover Christian’s secret camera at the secret sex party which everyone thought was a safe space.

X doesn’t have enough plot points to justify its length. I genuinely don’t know how this movie got itself to 2 hours and I just saw it. The structure of the film and its story are weird and sort of vague. As much as Christian’s worst fears do eventually come true, the film never successfully ups the tension. This is the opposite of a griping narrative. The more we delve into these people and this story, the less I was interested. For a two hour film, I found the construction of The Foundation to be simultaneously specific in details but vague in the how and why. The film seems to understand Christian’s sexuality and motivations. But the dozens of other people who attend these weirdly regimented but not actually that kinky sex parties? I don’t understand their sexual habits or what they’re getting out of any of this.

Tonally, this movie is nearly indescribable. Usually when I see a movie I deem to have issues in tone I can see what they’re going for, they just didn’t reach it. I don’t even know what X was going for here. There’s a thriller element, sure. But X is at least partially a comedy. Which is a bold move for a movie about secret sex societies. But it’s never fully a comedy or at least, not actually funny so this doesn’t work. It simply undermines the entire intrigue and atmosphere of the secret sex parties. Mining comedy out of ridiculous ritual taken super seriously could be a really funny and fresh take on the secret sex party genre. But that’s not really what X does. The characters are somewhat ridiculous, but the situation itself doesn’t get nearly as made fun of as it should.

I simultaneously feel like I have paragraphs more to say about X but that I’ve also hit a wall into how to talk about this movie. I mostly find it baffling. This is such a bizarre series of choices set to film. It ends up being significantly less than the sum of its parts even though some of those parts should be quite notable. It’s hard to imagine a version of this film that’s good or at least, one I enjoy without basically making up a whole new film with a completely different tone. All in all, I do not know what this film was going for at all. And it definitely didn’t help that I saw a version where the word shit was bleeped, even during a montage of a woman masturbating to illicit bathroom footage. Don’t worry though, everyone’s butt crack was blurred. Good taste prevails.

Overall rating: 2.0/10

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