CORPORAL PUNISHMENT, CORPOREAL BLISS We are led – and almost literally so, leash and all, as lead performer Kleopatra appears blindfolded onscreen – into the second installment of HardWerk’s Triptychon series by the ring of a bell, the creak of an old wooden school desk, a nervous lick of the lips and three waiting figures. Hanging in the air with it all: anticipation, intention, veneration. It’s not for nothing that the filmmakers have adopted a slower pace for this intense gangbang – there’s a meditative quality to the echoing spanks and answering whimpers, to the push and the pull, to effortless dance of desire between the four participating performers; an absolute presence of mind and an absolute presence of flesh. As with the previous Triptychon film, the composition finds its own seamless choreography across multiple perspectives, so creating stunning juxtapositions between pain and pleasure; between a hand tightened around a throat and the easy laughter in each moment of disarming tenderness; between the polish of ‘pre’ and the primal of ‘right now’…
