Carter Davis

An intoxicating chronicle of the romantic liaisons of a group of beautiful young men and women in their Mediterranean idyll. Living in a rundown rural Italian villa, there’s little for them to do but sit around and have sex with each other.

A young man and woman trade stories about their scars - psychological, sexual and otherwise - in a variety of settings. Their relationship is at once immediate and immediately complicated by the depth of their revelations and their nakedness.

For this film, Herbert photographed the original 16mm material framed by frame with a 35mm camera. On screen, sensuality and sexuality, mythical and profane associations, motion and stationariness, framing, light, diaphragm and composition vie for supremacy. We see a boy in beautiful back lighting, the girl curling in the sunlight and we experience the existential and aesthetic inevitability of the physical contact. Herbert allows us to share the act of watching and paints his models like a portrait painter.