To be an adolescent and have your father work in porn

For her opera prima, Muriel d'Ansembourg has chosen a pair of debut actors: Caolán O'Gorman and Safiya Benaddi are Alec and Nina, two teenagers who meet at high school and who, based on a joint research project on pornography addiction, begin to develop the typical tension of first loves. The conflict arises when the young man, who helps his father shoot adult films on a makeshift set at his home, adopts intolerable behavior, a result of his precocious relationship with sex.Andrew Howard, a Welsh actor who has worked on The Odyssey or Tenet, alongside English porn star Alessa Savage, offer the adult perspective of the story, which explores the contradictions of making the porn industry too much of a domestic affair. The focus, however, is on the young man, an introverted boy who, in some way, lives a double life: although he finds it incredibly easy to dissociate when framing a close-up of his father's penis, when it comes to confronting his own sexuality, he is lost. It will be when he meets Nina that Alec will realize – as the film's title anticipates – who he really is; or, perhaps, who his personal circumstances have made him.The film seeks to make the viewer uncomfortable, not only by showing the pornographic exploitation of the female body – often violated and mistreated in this type of cinema – but also by placing a rather unconventional father-son relationship at the center. Alec lost his mother when he was little and found himself alone with Dylan, who tries to get by with what he knows how to do (apparently) best. Although the moral debate about the characters' decisions is particularly stimulating, the power of the proposal gradually dilutes as it progresses. The good ideas, however, do not disappear, and make Truly naked a seductive debut.