This collection of 7 shorts by Francois Ozon shows the talent that he would later display in longer form - humor, sensuality, erotica, empathetic treatment of homosexuality, and unsettling behavior. All of the shorts involve 2 people in a bed, and the camera-work is mostly single medium-shot setups. This means that he relies upon performance and inventiveness of narrative to make his point. Also Ozon adds an Ingmar Bergman bell ring after each short. The Black Hole, about a prostitute and her client, features Francois Delaivre who was in Ozon's earlier Le Petite Morte, with a fanciful horror-style conclusion. Mr Clean is solely reliant upon performance to create an unsettling character in opposition of the title, whereby there is no other evidence to support what he claims. The Lady is the weakest of the group, presenting a somewhat aimless tale of the coupling an older woman and a young boy. Presenting a woman as 52 and still attractive and sexually active, suggests a theme that Ozon will later present with Under the Sand and 8 Women. Heads and Tails is a gimmicky piece with a funny conclusion. The Ideal Man uses humor to undercut the tension of both a woman in love in pain, and lesbianism. Again Ozon has an older woman pursuing a younger person, though what could be interpreted as predatory behavior is diluted by the context of patience and empathy. Love in the Dark is the most successful of the shorts in terms of sustained tone. It shows a woman's sexual frustration over men's predilections, and gets laughs from a reversal of the social expectation that a women prefers to make love in the dark. What elevates the situation is how innocent and dumb and of course gorgeous the man still is. Ozon also can't help being a little heterophobic here. The Virgins covers the same male bisexual territory as his short Summer Dress, for which he was criticized for seeming homophobia, or at least an argument that a gay man cannot be exclusively gay when there is a woman available. However by adding a gay man's curiosity about women to counterbalance a straight man's curiosity about another man, this time is seems less problematic. Here also Ozon shows two beautiful men in erotic and amenable behavior.
