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The Men from Ipanema
Rating: 3 Stars
Written, photographed and directed by Max Julien. Edited by Joe Motta and Delta Productions. Music by A.M. Sound. Starring Artur Mello, Fabio Scorpion, Antonio de Barros, Claudio Silva, Daniel Vieira, Mauricio Cunha, Jose Furtado, Armando de Souza, Edmundo Castro, Gabriel Faria, and Walter Soares.
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At a friend's invitation, sensitive little Marcio (Artur Mello) treks in from the provinces to spend New Year's Eve in Rio de Janeiro. His host (Fabio Scorpion) escorts him to the beach at Ipanema, where they ogle men and take snapshots. When the pictures are developed, they spot an awesome presence in the background of one shot: Walter Soares, a megamuscled ultra-hunk who's wearing nothing but a swatch of yellow lycra stretched across his crotch.

Obsessed with tracking down this beefy divinity, Marcio searches through clubs and tourist sites, pausing now and then for urgent jerkoff breaks. There is, alas, no sign of the mystery man. Discouraged, he threatens to go home just as the New Year's festivities are getting underway. But Scorpion convinces him to stay. They visit a shaman who tells him to put the photo of Soares in a small boat, cover it with white flowers, and shove it off to sea at midnight as an offering to the sea goddess Yemanja. Marcio follows the shaman's instructions and nearly drowns. But who should come to the rescue...?

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Max Julien, who wrote, shot and directed with a keen sense of place, has filled this video with gorgeous, riveting, not always touristy footage of Rio. There's a feeling for the street life of the city, which hasn't been put to such effective use in gay porn since Kristen Bjorn's Carnaval in Rio. The sex, unfortunately, doesn't quite reach Bjornian levels of intensity. There are too many jump cuts, and Julien doesn't seem to know quite how to build or shape a sex scene. But the male flesh on display in The Men from Ipanema is as spectacular as the terrain. Every member of the cast appears to love his work, and the zest for sex is infectious.