Romantic sex appears to be the theme that director Paul Barresi wants to bring to an audience who regularly sees only images of gay men involved in hot nasty sex. In the first two scenes, one or both of the partners exclaim "I Love You" in a sexy husky whisper. It's pretty daring to throw those "three little words" into a gay male porn video, so Barresi deserves big kudos for including those words and for wanting to make the video in the first place. He is moving into an interesting new direction.

However, the romance side of this video doesn't translate. The action is still just sex. The models are going through the motions of porn action, and some generic romantic signifiers (i.e. cuddling, touching, fireside sex, candles and "I Love You"s) have been welded on to give it credibility. The couples are sexy and cute, but one minute into their scenes they've lost the romance and are just banging away at each other, like pieces of meat.

Ironically, the closing scene finds one of the "coupled" studs stealing away from his life partner to some random stud's cabin to get his ass banged like a wild dog. Perhaps the message is meant to be tongue-in-cheek. And that statement points out the larger problem - the action doesn't really heat up, because it doesn't have a clear idea of what it is.

Again, big kudos to Barresi for the idea and the balls to get it off the ground.