“Pardon the West-Coastness,” says Jesse, the artist protagonist of I Want Your Love. He’s talking to a friend about relationships, but his remark is apropos the movie as a whole. The characters, a group of San Francisco men whose lives intersect with Jesse’s on the eve of his reluctant departure for Ohio, are cerebral, scruffy, stoned, self-involved — yep, very West Coast-y.
The pace is accordingly very laid-back, but the sex scenes are ground-breaking — not just because of the hard-ons and the cum shots, but because they expand our understanding of the characters and the complications of sexual intimacy.
Variously awkward, messy, joyful or revelatory, the sex feels real — which, in essence, it is.
Fri. Oct. 5, 10:30 p.m., Tampa Theatre, tiglff.com
This article appears in Oct 4-10, 2012.