While La Carn, screening at SXSW London, seeks to examine the relationship between sex, desire, language, physicality, and emotional connection, it also raises a significant ethical concern.
If you are a discreet gay man looking for connection and intimacy online, how would you feel if you later discovered that your image had appeared in a film without your knowledge? This unsettling question lingered in my mind throughout Joan Porcel’s La Carn.
The film originates from a live performance created by Spanish dancer Lluís Garau, who adapts his eponymous one-man stage show into a deeply personal cinematic exploration. Blurring the boundaries between performance and reality, Garau invites audiences into his inner world while reflecting on loneliness, desire, and queer existence.
Garau plays a young dancer living in Mallorca, caught between solitude and longing. While it remains unclear how much of the narrative is drawn directly from his own life, it is evident that he performs a version of himself, presenting an intimate portrait of what it means to be a gay artist navigating an often hostile environment.
The film’s most striking element is Garau’s fascination with Chatroulette, an online platform for random video encounters. Although many users approach the platform with sexual intentions, Garau appears to be searching for something deeper: an emotional connection. This pursuit becomes the basis of both the film and his performance work, as audiences silently observe him interacting with strangers in the dark.
Through these conversations, La Carn presents a kaleidoscopic portrait of contemporary gay male life. Some users communicate only through text. Others expose themselves immediately on camera. Some are old enough to be considered “daddies”, while others seem uncomfortably young. Among them is a masked Black man who claims to work at an airport and owns a blue van. Garau gradually becomes attached to him and eventually agrees to meet him in person.
The meeting is arranged at Es Carnatge, a coastal park in Palma known as a discreet cruising spot for gay men. At the same time, Garau begins receiving anonymous homophobic emails. As he becomes increasingly invested in these online relationships, the film introduces elements of psychological thriller, suggesting the dangers that often accompany queer desire and vulnerability.
The narrative also evokes the memory of a homophobic murder that once occurred in Es Carnatge, reminding viewers of the real threats faced by LGBTQ+ communities. Yet despite these references, the film is ultimately less interested in social critique than in the protagonist’s emotional and psychological state.
Garau’s longing for intimacy eventually culminates in a disturbing moment of emotional and sexual excess. What begins as performative exhibitionism gradually transforms into an impulsive and troubling pursuit of gratification. However, the threats surrounding him never fully materialise into dramatic consequences. Rather than escalating into a conventional thriller, the film turns inward, becoming an exploration of obsession, loneliness, and self-perception.
While La Carn seeks to examine the relationship between sex, desire, language, physicality, and emotional connection, it also raises a significant ethical concern. Many of the men appearing in Garau’s online conversations seem unlikely to have provided informed consent for their images to be used in the film.
According to the filmmakers, considerable effort was made during post-production to protect participants’ identities through facial alterations, voice modifications, and AI-assisted interventions. Yet this explanation remains somewhat unsatisfying. If such extensive measures were required to conceal identities, one cannot help but wonder whether the ethical issue originated much earlier in the filmmaking process.
Interestingly, this concern is briefly raised within the film itself through a voice message from Garau’s agent. However, the question remains unresolved. The filmmakers appear aware of the controversy but ultimately choose to present it rather than meaningfully engage with it.
From this perspective, La Carn is both experimental and confrontational. Drawing on Porcel’s documentary background, the film deliberately blurs the line between fiction and reality, challenging audiences to reflect on the boundaries between public and private life, performance and identity, desire and exploitation.
One of the film’s most admirable qualities is its patience. The extended sequences of Garau moving from one conversation to another occupy a substantial portion of the runtime. What initially feels exciting gradually becomes repetitive and routine, mirroring the endless cycle of one’s libido. The anticipation of meeting someone new slowly transforms into a compulsive habit.
In this sense, La Carn offers a compelling observation about contemporary queer life. Desire remains persistent, yet satisfaction often feels elusive. The search for intimacy continues, but genuine connection remains frustratingly out of reach.
As a result, La Carn is likely to provoke mixed reactions. On the one hand, its use of random online encounters raises serious questions about consent and the ethics of representation. On the other hand, it provides a thoughtful and often moving examination of queer loneliness, as well as the emotional dependencies that can emerge when love, intimacy, and belonging are difficult to find in everyday life.
Whether one ultimately embraces or rejects its methods, La Carn succeeds in generating debate — and perhaps that is precisely what makes it such a fascinating and troubling work.
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