Gay Video Review	Gay Video Reviews Archive

The White Room
Rating: 3 Stars
Produced and directed by Sean Spence. Videography by Rick Hanning and Nicolae Tiberius. Edited by Nicolae Tiberius. Music by Spoon. Starring Matthew Green, Dean Monroe, Oliver Fox, Ben Duffy, Anton Van Heusen, and Igor Vidal.
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In September, 2000, the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) relaxed its interpretation of the UK's Obscene Publications Act-- a statute, unrevised since the 1950s, that proscribes material that "tends to deprave or corrupt persons who are likely to read, see, or hear it." New guidelines for the BBFC's adults-only classification, R18, now permit "erections, masturbation, oral-genital contact, licking and sucking, penetration by finger, penis, tongue, vibrator or dildo, group activity, ejaculation, and semen." Rape fantasies, bondage, and fisting remain verboten, but the UK, which still has about the strictest porn laws in Europe, is finally permitting hardcore gay adult videos to be sold openly in designated sex shops.

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L.A.'s Sports & Recreation Video has secured American distribution rights to London-based Zipper Video's now-explicit output, beginning with The White Room and Quicksilver, both directed by the competent Sean Spence. The White Room is self-consciously aestheticized, with a shot-through-gauze visual softness. Four couplings and a dildo-garnished solo are staged against plain white walls, pale blond woodwork, white sheets, a white carpet, and black furniture. There's no dialogue; music muffles some of the sounds of sex. But the action is paced well, and much of it succeeds.

Made in 2001, The White Room was a bestseller in the UK, and not just because of its novelty. Spence's sex-happy cast performs with passion and exuberance. The sex is largely vanilla, but encompasses butt play, hungry 69s, and emphatic fucking. Some of the models are familiar, notably honey-blond Anton Van Heusen, who used to turn up in softcore-- and made-for-export hardcore-- videos produced in the UK under heavier censorship. (He was in Mike Esser's boy-band mockumentary, Exposed.) Here, in separate episodes, he flip-flops with compact, bendable Igor Vidal, and tops firm-bodied Matthew Green. The best loop, however, may be the last, in which Ben Duffy, who's like a horny little Disney animal, ploughs his way into Dean Monroe's butt.