Unsimulated: Travis Mathews on I Want Your Love

On 26 June, the US Supreme Court dissolved the country’s Defense of Marriage Act, a federal law that denied benefits to same-sex couples legally married in their states, including social security, immigration rights and family leave. It was a huge leap forward for gay rights in the States. How did the New Yorker celebrate this sea change? With a cover depicting Bert and Ernie, Sesame Street’s eternally bickering ‘roommates’, snuggling up on the couch to watch the ruling. It’s a sweet image and well-meaning gesture, but it’s typical of the depiction of gay relationships in mainstream media. At best, the use of Bert and Ernie as a symbol for homosexual love is euphemistic – a nudge-nudge, wink-wink to everyone who’s suspected those best of buds were more than just friends. But at worst, it infantilises gay people, equating them to felt puppets that don’t exist below the waist.

If you want a tonic for this desexualisation of gay relationships, look no further than Travis Mathews’ I Want Your Love, a low-key, loose-limbed tale of the lives and loves of half a dozen gay men in San Francisco. There’s no soft peddling when it comes to these boys’ sex lives. Over its brisk, 71-minute running time, you’ll find more money shots than on a numismatist’s Tumblr. Some have labeled it porn – the Australian Film Classification Board banned the film from playing at festivals in Melbourne and Sydney – but for Mathews, it’s essential that the (unsimulated) sex in his film was shown in all its sweaty, raw, spittle-flecked glory. “It’s important for me not to shy away from sex if I’m going to try and be honest about these characters’ lives,” says Mathews down the phone from Los Angeles. “Sex was always something that I knew was going to be an integral piece to the story.”

The graphic sex scenes in I Want Your Love do more than add veracity to the semi-improvised drama playing out on screen, however. Mathews argues that the more colourful the characters’ sex lives, the richer the storytelling. “The sex that we are accustomed to seeing in films in general is pretty limited,” he says. “I’m interested in this whole continuum and what it says about story and character once you introduce sex. Having sex is sometimes awkward or sometimes playful, or sometimes confusing, or sometimes very sweet. All of these ways of having sex I rarely see in gay films, and partly me wanting to [show sex realistically] is me wanting to connect with people and make them feel like, OK, I’m not alone in these different sexual experiences.”

What feels most radical about Mathews’ film, though, isn’t its bracing attitude towards doing the nasty, but its lack of the kind of clichés that burden the vast majority of LGBT films. I Want Your Love centres on Jesse (Jesse Metzger), a performance artist in his early 30s who’s going through an existential crisis that, refreshingly, has nothing to do with his sexual orientation. His problems are financial and professional: he’s not making ends meet as an artist, so he’s moving from his bohemian paradise of San Francisco to live with his parents back in his less glamorous hometown in Ohio.

“I wanted the movie to be like you just drop into this world,” Mathews explains, “and any sort of crisis or any sort of drama is not around the familiar gay tropes that we’ve seen a million times. It’s not a coming out story. It’s not a bullying story. It’s not a gay marriage story. It’s some guys in their mid-20s or early 30s who are trying to figure their shit out and they are having sex, like a lot of people do.” Think of it, then, as a gay, male, West Coast version of Lena Dunham’s Girls, or, as one reviewer wittily dubbed it, mumblehardcore.

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“When I was 15 I was starved for images and representations of gay men that felt in any way relatable to my own life” – Travis Mathews

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Mathews, whose forthcoming film Interior. Leather Bar is an intriguing collaboration with James Franco that re-imagines the infamous 40 minutes of hardcore gay scenes edited out of William Friedkin’s Cruising, grew up, like his protagonist Jesse, in small town Ohio before moving to the cultural hub of San Francisco. He suggests he’s making these films concerned with sex and sexuality – which also include the series In Their Room, a collection of short documentaries that look at the sex lives of gay couples around the globe – for his younger, Ohio-trapped self. “When I was 15 I was starved for images and representations of gay men that felt in any way relatable to my own life,” he tells me. “I’m wanting to create movies that can show queer people in different ways and that feel more relatable and natural and inviting.”

He isn’t the only one. Not since the early 90s has queer cinema been in such rich form, with films such as Andrew Haigh’s Weekend, Ira Sachs’ Keep the Lights On and the still to be released Blue Is the Warmest Colour, which won the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes, among the fine LGBT-themed films breaking out of niche LGBT festivals and into the mainstream. “I think what’s happening is that we’re at a time as gay filmmakers, and also audience members and even beyond that the bigger society, where we’re interested in gay stories that aren’t necessarily driven by the familiar gay crisis plot points,” suggests Mathews when asked why queer films seems to be in such rude health. “I mean, there are so many stories that just have never been told about gay characters who aren’t the sidekick or killer or victim, and what I see is there’s a sophistication that’s emerging with the ways in which stories are being told with gay characters – we’re just making better films, quite honestly.”