Quartile rating: 5.5/10 · 1 rating
Filmmakers James Franco and Travis Mathews re-imagine the lost 40 minutes from "Cruising" as a starting point to a broader exploration of sexual and creative freedom.
Interior. Leather Bar. is a genuinely singular piece of meta-cinema — part documentary, part fictional reconstruction, part artistic provocation — built around reimagining the lost explicit footage from William Friedkin's controversial 'Cruising.' Its novelty is legitimately high: the hybrid form, Franco and Mathews's collaborative self-reflexivity, and the frank interrogation of gay sexuality and cinematic censorship make it unmistakably distinctive. Acting is serviceable in the documentary-style segments, with candid moments from the participants lending authenticity. Cinematography is competent and appropriately raw for the form. The plot, however, is thin — more a provocation and essay than a structured narrative — and the ending dissipates rather than resolves, leaving the viewer with unanswered conceptual threads rather than earned closure.