There is one big problem with Plaisirs D'Orient . The main players in the sex scenes can barely maintain an erection even before the penetration takes place. Maybe this film is made while the pharmacies are closed and they can't get their hands on any artificial enhancement drugs as a result, but either way the sight of a limp dick bending over as it is forcibly stuffed into an asshole looks really painful to me after too many times the camera closes-up on such a scene. It seems that the more candles Jean Daniel Cadinot has to put on his birthday cakes, the more he is turning into some inferior Bel Ami-kind film maker, churning out gay adult flicks with pretty faces but nary the urgency or sexual energy to go along with the emotionless twinks and limp fat cocks.

The plot has Lucas Samara and Karim Nadir muddling their way through all kinds of sexual encounters in what seems like a Maghribi-meets-France ebony-meets-ivory coupling that should have been fun if it isn't so lifeless and hollow. Karim is an attractive man but he can't even maintain a decent erection, so much so that his partners that are trying to blow him into a semi-decent hard-on begin to come off like stressed-out students sitting for some maths quiz that they haven't prepared for. Lucas, on the other, is a handsome if stereotypically blond young man who bottoms. Unfortunately, his scenes with those limp-dicked men he partners with - where do Mr Cadinot find these men, anyway? - does little to show me what he really has.

Passionless, hollow, and mechanical, Plaisirs D'Orient is badly in need of dose of Viagra for itself. Unless the viewer goes solely for pretty faces and steroidal muscles, there is little chance of this movie being anything more than a brightly-colored nicely-filmed cautionary tale on impotent gay-for-pay actors.

Rating: D