Porn Without Sex: "Invasive Treatments"
2021 · 3m
Directed by Laura Moss
Genres: comedy, experimental, satire
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic, theatrical
Sexy attorneys convene to discuss a horrific bus accident in a vignette that mimics the aesthetics of 1991 softcore pornography without ever delivering the pornography. A deadpan parody of the genre's most absurd genre conventions.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Porn without the sex is just bad TV, and Laura Moss knows it — that's the whole joke and it lands perfectly.
Laura Moss in a 1991-styled not-quite-pornographic vignette about bus-accident-discussing attorneys is exactly the conceptual mode that distinguishes her later feature work — a real artifact.
At 3:20, deliberately structured as porn but withholding the sex entirely — leaving only the ridiculous framing devices, sexy attorneys discussing a horrific bus accident. The conceit is the whole bit and it's the right length for it.