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The Lifestyle: Group Sex In The Suburbs: Review

LIFESTYLE: GROUP SEX IN THE SUBURBS, THE
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Depending on how you look at it, this graphic look at aging couples who count recreational group sex among their favorite pastimes will either put you swearing off sex entirely or feeling oddly encouraged about the prospect of getting old and still getting it on. Filmmaker David Schisgall got up-close and extremely personal with a group of older Americans who continue to embrace "the lifestyle" — group sex — long after the demise of '60s love ins and 70s key parties. Schisgall visits a hale and hearty 73-year-old widower with a "use it or lose it" mind-set and a mirror ball in his rec-room; sits back while a group of friends and lovers throw a pot-luck barbecue/sex party; and travels to the Palm Springs Convention Center for "Lifestyles '97," a swingers convention at which wife-swappers can meet while entrepreneurs hawk all manner of hoods, harnesses, prods and plugs. None of Schisgall's subjects — save a graduate student and his wife — appears younger than 50, and the sight of their couplings is rather extraordinary in light of our culture's heavy emphasis on youth and bodily perfection. Schisgall's camera never flinches, but in the rush to non-judgement a less-liberated agenda is left unexplored. Take the former librarian who cracks a naughty smile at the mention of two women servicing someone's husband, but recoils at the thought of two men together; among her swinging friends, she explains, bisexual men aren't tolerated. In light of all of the things they do tolerate, that's a telling double standard. Add the teary testimony of the grad-student's wife, who puts the kibosh on their sexual shenanigans when she realizes she, not her eager husband, is the one getting picked up and passed around, and you have to ask: Whose fantasy is this, anyway? leave a comment --Ken Fox
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