For nearly 30 years, Pink Narcissus was a film as mysterious as it is sensual and erotic. Clocking in at just over an hour, it was released in 1971 with an anonymous director, and skirted the obscenity laws. Artistic, radical, with a truly innovative cinematic palette, it remained unashamedly gay and pornographic. Shot on Super-8 and almost dialogue free, it builds a loose narrative around the dreams and fantasies a male sex worker has in his New York apartment between clients. He imagines himself a Spanish matador, a Roman slave, and among leather-clad bikers hanging around grimy toilets.
As much as the acting, the sensuality of these scenes comes from the washes of scenographic colour: the bullfighter pulls up his high boots amid a variety of purple hues; the cottaging spot is a monochrome of black and grey; Narcissus is shown in a boudoir of burning pink. The climax comes when the sex worker – a mop of dark curly hair, high cheek bones – plays both a Middle Eastern potentate and his catamite, entertained by an increasingly energetic male belly dancer, the latter’s erection barely covered in a sheer veil.
