Unnaturally Acting

A Redditor recently posted a link to the nudist movie Act Naturally, available to watch for free online. I'd heard about this movie, and so decided to give it a watch. Unfortunately, I was not too impressed with it, so I wrote down some of my thoughts, copied here from the discussion on Reddit.

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I don't like to criticize art, because I know how much work goes into it, and it's like trampling on people's dreams, but I struggled through this movie. The acting is cringey (ironic, for a movie called "act naturally"), the writing is riddled with clichés, the camera work is dodgy (it seems like more care was put into positioning the actors than trying to hold the camera steady), and the nudity occupies a strange middle ground where it shows too much to satisfy prudish viewers, yet is still strangely shy about full frontal (except in the few instances where the film inexplicably subjects the viewer to what amounts to an unsolicited dick pic, up close and personal*).

Also, there's a strangely sexual undercurrent (along with excessive drinking - although that, sadly, is not an inaccurate portrayal of nudism in my experience), with masturbation, used condoms, casual hook-ups, and gay jokes littered throughout - presenting a rather more liberated view of nudism, which isn't altogether a bad thing (although it's a bit cruder than I would approach the issue), but seems at odds with the public image nudism seems preoccupied with putting forth.

Maybe it's included to appeal to a younger, less uptight demographic, or else just to fill out the movie's plot with some sexual and romantic tension. Regardless, I feel like this movie's intended audience isn't really nudists**, and yet I can't envision any reason a non-nudist would watch it, unless he's being subjected to it by a nudist friend. In which case, I would ask: is this the sort of cinematic experience the nudist community has to offer the world? Because I think we need to do better.

* This is pure speculation, but I wonder if the principal actors were uncomfortable with full frontal nudity, leading the filmmakers to contract out those scenes to faceless extras - which would explain the disjointed closeups and montages. But the result reminds me of the totally gratuitous (the only time I've ever used that word unironically) and unnecessary porn scenes added to Caligula, turning what should have been an epic Roman tragedy into cheap smut.

** Is it really fun for experienced nudists to relive the awkwardness and antagonism the textile world has against us? Or is it just catharsis to see those characters turn around in the end? (Although I didn't really feel like the transformation in this film was either full or very convincing). I think most nudists' first time at a resort was after they were already interested, so yeah, there's some nervousness involved, but not the outright antagonism of a textile being forced to disrobe. Is this a kind of torture porn for nudists - watching textiles forcibly indoctrinated into the lifestyle?

On the other hand, I know that representing textiles' initial impressions of nudism could act to make those characters more relatable to a wider audience, but do we really want to emphasize that awkward transitional period? Rather than showing what nudism is like at its best, when you're fully integrated into the lifestyle, as a desirable goal to pursue? Instead of leaving textiles thinking, "god this is so awkward; yeah, they get comfortable with it in the end, but it hardly seems worth it."

I think there's room for documentary-style videos of what resort life is like - and that's why we need more cameras documenting life inside resort fences, but can't we, as nudists, come up with different stories that integrate nudism into a wider world, with plots that go beyond "visiting a resort"? (Or at the very least, have an actual story where the action taking place at a resort is purely incidental). To show nudism as it could be - integrated logically into society, without paying lip service to textile neuroses ("lol, naked people are odd"), or depicting nudism as a cult of eccentric (if lovable) outsiders? I think we need to raise the bar and set our standards higher.