Michael Mak
Sex and Zen

 SUN, HEALTH & HAPPY FUCKS! 

“Ohhh finally a joyful and fun sex film, as sex should truly be experienced” I said at the screening of this film in a little arthouse cinema back in 1992.
A film, this Sex and Zen (1991) by the young Michael Mak, that deviates significantly from the murky and unhealthy depictions of agonized, grim, and existentialist sex found in many historically significant Western films (just think of “Last Tango in Paris” or “Nine 1/2 Weeks” to throw out a couple of names from a vast filmography of the genre).
A film that, 15 years ago, truly inaugurated a new genre and is still considered a cult of soft but fun and cheerful erotica, loosely inspired by the classic of Eastern erotic literature “The Carnal Prayer Mat” from 1634 by the writer Li Yu.

The beautiful thing you enjoy from the start is the great amount of playful scenes interspersed with highly exciting erotic scenes, while keeping the story on the edge of irony and never descending into excessive vulgarity of hardcore porn (more comedic than our domestic 80s films with the Fennech but much more arousing than the tawdry-pulp of the Venetian Brass!!).

The director Michael Mak successfully achieves the difficult balance in a well-dosed contrast between “full carnality” (plentiful bosoms bouncing everywhere, equine phalluses, enthusiastic fellations, aquatic couplings, and shady tunes of a double-reed flute) and vaguely “zen” teachings (The more you copulate, the more the body lives in balance – never be ashamed of your deepest desires– and other gems scattered here and there in the film).
Rich in visual ideas bordering on the grotesque (there are various couplings among chains and pulley mechanisms and a healthy sado-masochism more or less latent everywhere), the film is an ode to sex and the playfulness of doing it, showcasing it, displaying it in the sunlight, without inhibitions or taboos because “there is nothing to be ashamed of if things are done with joy and love”.

It's the story of a young man who (like 70% of young men) would like to fuck all the women he comes across but, not having the adequate measurements to support it, has the enormous penis of a horse transplanted (one of the funniest scenes I remember!) mixing it up with all sorts of antics among beautiful women who are practically always available, lustful playful jokes but never crude, and truly ingenious and surprising choreographic inventions.

A highly visual film, where certainly facial expressions, dialogues, or the psychological depth of the different characters do not act in it (then these Chinese, let's face it, all have great boiled fish faces for us Europeans!).
Here the true protagonists become the exhibited muscles, the wet flesh, the sculpted buttocks, the tattoos, and the actions truly well orchestrated in a triumph of organs, nerves, gasps, and sweat exciting enough to provoke shy cinephile erections.
A film that also speaks to us through a series of clichés now fixed in the male mentality since the dawn of time: the more women you have sex with, the more virile you are, the bigger your dick, the cooler you are, the more sexual positions you know, the more you think you know the art of lovemaking and so on. A lot of obviousness and not all that truth (let's say it out loud, shall we?).

Oh well, like all stories worth respecting, there is also its final moral (those who want too much achieve nothing, in short) but here, really, the story is of little consequence. The most successful aspect of this film, I repeat, is the right balance between laughter and sex which is one of the most difficult exercises to achieve, comparable to the combination of horror and comedy, sometimes leaning towards the humorous side (and you laugh quite a bit) and sometimes towards the titillating side (and I assure you, some scenes are more arousing than a little hard film from the Rocco Siffredi Production!).