20th Aug2013

I Want Your Love – DVD

by timbaros

images-15 I Want Your Love, by Travis Mathews (Interior: Leather Bar), started out as a short film in 2010 and has now been turned into a feature film. It opens up in cinemas this week and takes a pornographic look at the relationships of a group of gay men living in San Francisco.

Twenty-something Jesse (Jesse Metzger) is forced to move back to the Midwest (Ohio) as he can no longer afford to live in San Francisco. He wants to remain an artist but at the same time needs to earn a living. I Want Your Love presents the last 36 hours of his time in San Francisco before he moves back to Ohio. It also tells the stories of the relationships of his roommate and their circle of friends. These last 36 hours involve lots of sex between Jesse and various men, Jesse’s roommate with his boyfriend and then both of them later on in a three-way, and another male couple who attend Jesse’s going away party. Jesse decides not to attend the party due to the ambivalence of his move and his not wanting to say goodbye to everyone, and in a fit of emotion and confusion, starts to have sex with a very good friend and mentor, but starts short of completing the act.
The short version of this film was shown at a number of LGBT film Festivals around the world in 2010. This new 71-minute version goes more in depth in dealing with Jesse’s angst about leaving San Francisco and focuses a lot more on his friends and their relationships. These relationships involve lots of sex, graphic sex scenes that the viewer may or may not find necessary. However, the chemistry between the actors in these sex scenes is very palpable, so real, making I Want Your Love look like a documentary where the actors aren’t even aware that there is a camera in the room filming them. Mathews InTheir Room series was all about gay men in their bedrooms. I Want Your Love, which is being released by Nakedsword – one of the largest gay internet pornography companies on the Web, takes this idea one step further and presents a narrative film of gay men, not just in their bedrooms, but in their relationships with other men, emotionally, as friends, and sexually as well. This film was due to be shown at gay film festivals in Australia but was banned by that country’s film commission board. Mathew’s In Their Room Berlin film was also banned the previous year. After having watched the short version of this film, James Franco contacted Mathews in 2012 to collaborate on what would become Interior. Leather Bar – which was shown earlier this year at the London LGBT Film Festival.
Is I Want Your Love a hard or soft gay porn flick? A documentary? Perhaps. But what it isn’t is a bad film. With I Want Your Love, it shows that Mathews (who directed, wrote, shot and edited this film) has grown as a filmmaker and presents to us a highly intimate (and perhaps personal) story and true representation of gay men and their lives and relationships.
Mathews has said that “with my films I have always sought to capture honest and intimate depictions of modern gay life with everyday men.” In this film he has.
I Want Your Love is released by Peccadillo is now out on DVD –  BUY HERE