“This emphasizing of the public health message angle of the film, clearly intended to be a cautionary tale of sorts for today’s teenagers with ridiculously easy access to online sexual content, ends up undermining the artistic and dramatic strength of Truly Naked.“

Truly Naked could have been your classic coming-of-age story set against a strong social background, if it was not for its one distinctive characteristic: the teenage protagonist’s father is an amateur pornographic content creator, with all shooting, editing and uploading processes being taken care of by his son. This is laid out in the open from the very first scene, which immediately sets the tone for the film – working with melodramatic conventions and techniques rather than aiming for social realism and documentary-style veracity. The story is kicked off by pairing up Alec with fellow schoolmate Nina to prepare an exposé on online porn addiction in front of their class. Nina openly advocates for feminist principles, and both teenagers start having feelings for each other, paving the way for the quarrels and letdowns of the straightforward first half of the film.

Truly Naked then takes a captivating turn in its second act, in which both film and characters do their best at attempting to have the two worlds coexist, acknowledging that neither will subdue the other. Since they truly wish, deep down, to make their burgeoning couple work, both Alec and Nina take a step inside the other’s world. This initiates a cleverly written and very well-thought-out relationship between Nina and Lizzie, an actress with whom Alec’s father Dylan regularly works. The two women bond over their shared feminist consciousness (almost the first thing Lizzie says to Nina is that in any given context, women “suffer alone and smile in public”), which transcends their differences. It gives the younger woman the opportunity to deepen her viewpoints, still mostly theoretical, with the pragmatism of the more experienced woman. Lizzie opens Nina’s eyes to the fact that pornography did not invent women’s suffering and oppression, even though it blatantly feeds on it like a lot of other businesses, but in a more blunt way.

Safiya Benaddi and Alessa Savage, who portray the two women, give great performances, as does the rest of the cast, starting with Caolán O’Gorman as Alec and Andrew Howard as Dylan. This continues through the final act, even though the film takes a U-turn as a result of another twist of melodramatic proportions in which the business part of Dylan and Alec’s family business destroys the family part. Wanting to boost their number of views, Dylan makes an extreme and unilateral decision regarding the kind of sexual content he imposes on Lizzie. This will only result in provoking utter disgust and outcry from all his entourage, which the film picks up on. All of a sudden, the horizon of Truly Naked is no longer cohabitation but deletion, pure and simple. Once pornography is yet again categorized, without distinction, as the enemy, the film pushes this idea to the extreme: symbolically and visually, the ending is about turning off not only pornography but also any audiovisual recording of any sexual act, even private and consensual. This emphasizing of the public health message angle of the film, clearly intended to be a cautionary tale of sorts for today’s teenagers with ridiculously easy access to online sexual content, ends up undermining the artistic and dramatic strength of Truly Naked.

(c) Image copyright – Myrthe Mosterman