Ordinarily I spend my time reviewing books. Well, that’s not entirely true. I’m busy being a student at the moment (if there isn’t an oxymoron lurking in that statement) and I have the day-to-day minutiae of making coffee, not smoking cigarettes and all the other stuff that fills my day from pre-dawn until post-dusk. But, usually, I review books and not movies.
However, to cut a long story short, I recently found myself talking with writer, journalist and playwright Polly Frost. Polly Frost is the author of Deep Inside, a celebrated anthology of erotic fiction that breaks boundaries, pushes envelopes and deserves its high level of critical acclaim. Since the success of Deep Inside, Polly has been working with Matt Lambert and Ray Sawhill on the production of The Fold.
According to the preliminary publicity, The Fold is “Part sci-fi, part sex comedy, part art movie, The Fold interweaves stories involving a time-travelling geek with Aspergers Syndrome, an investigation by a Gaming Babes Magazine reporter, a sex-cult guru, a right-wing CEO determined to remake history, and a New Jersey hot-tub salesman for whom things mysteriously start to go the right way.”
Ordinarily I find sex and comedy go together as well as custard and herring. If I want my partner to have a good laugh I can simply take my clothes off. Whenever I see other people trying to amuse me with comical sexual antics I either cringe, wince or politely ask my mother to stop trying to impress me in such a reductive manner. Additionally, whenever I read about something that is blending genres I invariably grimace and claim the urgent need to file my eyeballs.
But somehow The Fold moves above those usual drawbacks. The humour is bold throughout. The blend of sci-fi and sex comedy come together in a way that seems designed for the exciting new medium of the web serial. The science isn’t so technical that a Luddite like myself can’t grasp what’s happening. And the homage to stylistic genres of art movies is cleverly compiled and adds another level of enjoyment to the whole experience.
The Fold is already becoming cult viewing that needs to be seen. Within a week of its release the main download server had crashed due to the high volume of traffic. Now that problem has been resolved it’s definitely worth checking out. The eroticism is constant although the adult content is more akin to soft-core pornography than hard-core imagery. The acting is of a consistently high calibre and the cast look as though they’re having a lot of fun with this intelligent and insightful script.
More can be found at TheFold.tv.
Ashley Lister
September 2008
© 2008 Ashley Lister. All rights reserved.