Review: Steamy drama ‘Below Her Mouth’ doesn’t even buy you dinner first

The sexy lost weekend subgenre — in which sexual connections provide an entry into emotional and intellectual intimacies — has gained traction in recent years featuring same-sex male couples, for example: “Paris 05:59” and Andrew Haigh’s “Weekend.” April Mullen’s “Below Her Mouth” seeks to do the same, with a Sapphic twist. Why can’t girls have just as much fun as the boys?

Dallas (Erika Linder) is an unrepentant player, a butch roofer with a wandering eye, whose eye happens to land on Jasmine (Natalie Krill), a fashion editor engaged to a man. After a few chance encounters, the women spend a weekend together filled with carnal pleasure while Jasmine’s fiancé is out of out town.

But what screenwriter Stephanie Fabrizi failed to include in her script were the parts where the characters, you know, talk to each other. The story and dialogue are just rudimentary, cheesy setups for the extended sex scenes.

Despite the female filmmakers at the helm, the film treads into exploitative territory, with the ratio of screen time given to writhing female bodies far outweighing that given to their unique experiences as gay or closeted women in the world. With wooden performances and a lack of character development, “Below Her Mouth” is more X-rated, late-night cable skin flick than trenchant exploration of female sexuality.

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‘Below Her Mouth’

Not rated

Running time: 1 hour, 34 minutes

Playing: Arena Cinelounge Las Palmas, Hollywood

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