HARD PAINT

 Like "Stranger by the Lake", Filipe Matzembacher and Marcio Reolon's "Hard Paint" is both sexually explicit and set in a very specific gay milieu, in this case the world of gay chat-rooms where young Pedro works, mostly alone, but for a camera that records his every move as he dances and performs sex acts for the men watching. Unfortunately, Pedro is lonely, anti-social and sometimes violent, attracting the attention of 'Married Voyeur' who wants more than just to watch and Leo, another sex-worker who has 'stolen' Pedro's act.

When the film begins Pedro is living with his sister in Brazil's southern city of Porto Alegre but she leaves him for a job at the other end of the country; Pedro must cope on his own though he is clearly not cut out for it. As the sullen, sad hero who performs his 'act' under the name of Neonboy, applying different colours of luminous paint to his body, Shico Menegat is excellent while Bruno Fernandes is equally good as Leo, the sex-worker Pedro comes to depend on and possibly love.

As LGBTQ films go, "Hard Paint" is certainly a cut above; it's unsentimental and unapologetic, erotic but not sensational and sometimes surprisingly moving. Unfortunately the material itself is a bit on the thin side and at two hours it is overlong but it's also stylish and intelligent and clearly marks out its directors as talents to watch.