‘Pornomelancolía’ review: sex sells, and so does art

A mural of the heroic Emiliano Zapata in Chicago, Illinois. Image by Terence Faircloth, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0, via Flickr.

Is it possible to ever produce morally integral art in an age where all art must exist under the constraints of capitalism? If not, then what exactly distinguishes “art film” from less prestigious genres and even – slumped at the very bottom of the pile of low culture, deemed unworthy of any intellectual thought – pornographic film?

These are the questions raised by Argentine director Manuel Abramovich’s latest feature film Pornomelancolía (“Pornomelancholy”) which premiered at the San Sebastián Film Festival in 2022 and has since made its way onto online streaming platforms across the globe. The film follows Lalo Santos, a Mexican factory worker and sex influencer, who finds himself starring as Emiliano Zapata, the leading figure of the Mexican Revolution, in a bizarre period porn film; meanwhile, he struggles with his mental health.

As suggested by the word fusion in its title, Pornomelancolía does not portray the porn industry, nor the contemporary rise of casual digital sex work through platforms such as OnlyFans, in a particularly positive light. The mechanical workings of the Mexican porn film – as actors are instructed, lines are rehearsed and fake semen is sprayed from plastic tubes – demystify all the eroticism and excitement that the pornographic image lays claim to. Meanwhile, the actors’ intimate conversations that take place in hushed voices while on set, discussing struggles with poverty, HIV and mental health, expose the real, lived experiences that lie behind the sexual fantasy that we see being curated in the background.

Image by Mike Mozart, CC BY 2.0, via Flickr.

The film cleverly aligns its critique of the porn industry with a commentary on Latin America’s “peripheral” position within global flows of capital. The porn film’s perverse sensationalisation of the Mexican Revolution for the international porn market moves it beyond mere “sexploitation” and into the territory of “Mexploitation,” marketing a stereotyped image of Mexican culture for Western audiences. In one scene, an actor explains to Lalo the greater financial opportunities that come with success in the Anglophone porn world: ‘En caso de que hicieras una escena diciendo “fuck me,” o “oh my god,” ya sería otro mercado.’ (“If you were to make a scene saying “fuck me,” or “oh my god,” it would be another market.”) In another scene, a half-naked Lalo poses for the camera wearing an indigenous headdress while we hear an Anglo-American voice giving him directions in English off-camera. Afterwards, Lalo posts a photo to his Twitter account with the apt caption: ‘«Mexican» style for money.’ Abramovich represents pornography as just another provocative example of how the Global North exploits the Global South, feeding like vultures upon the racialised body of the Latino and the exotic allure of Mexican masculinity.

However, Pornomelancolía adds an extra layer of complexity to its anti-capitalist, anti-colonial critique of the porn industry through its own similar potential for the spectacularisation, commodification and exploitation of its subjects. The character of Lalo Santos is actually played by a real pornstar of the same stage name. Shortly before the film’s premiere, after working with Abramovich for four years, Lalo went public on his social media platforms expressing discontent with how he was treated during the film’s production and questioning the ethics of the film altogether. In an Instagram reel, he proposes: ‘Hay que ponernos a pensar ¿qué tan ético es apreciar estéticamente el sufrimiento de otra persona?’ (“We have to ask ourselves: how ethical is it to appreciate aesthetically the suffering of another person?”) At what point does Pornomelancolía’s aestheticised representation of vulnerable porn actors become its own kind of “poverty porn” for international, film festival-going, Mubi-watching audiences? Does it become the very thing it seeks to critique?

Image by Simon Law, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Flickr.

This is a question that Abramovich seems well aware of as he self-consciously attempts to demolish the wall that separates his art cinema from pornography. Although the film has been criticised for its lack of depth and character development, I wonder if this is part of a deliberate attempt to mimic the supposedly superficial concerns of pornography. In the sex scene between Lalo and a similar-looking actor who is supposed to represent his “double” – a surrealist scene which the director tells them was inspired by a Luis Buñuel film – the camera gets carried away by their erotic performance and we end up with what is actually a very beautifully shot sex scene. There comes a moment where we ask ourselves: are we still watching the trashy porn film or is this part of Abramovich’s serious art film? And if we can’t even tell, then what difference does it make? Perhaps not all pornography has to be automatically vulgar, just as not all art cinema necessarily has substance. Porn can be art, and art can be porn. And either way, the actors are performing for a voyeuristic audience with the promise of a pay cheque.

Despite its understandable controversy, Abramovich’s film functions as a brilliant prism for reflecting upon the struggles of critiquing capitalism through a medium that is dependent on capitalism. And if all film is dependent on capitalism, then surely the hierarchies that privilege arthouse cinema over internet pornography are unsustainable. These broad questions about culture under capitalism are certainly globally applicable. However, Abramovich’s bold amalgamation of digital sex work with neocolonial exploitation registers them specifically in the context of contemporary Latin America, and situates the film itself securely within the region’s vibrant, yet often overlooked, cinematic canon.