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Manville: The City of Men
Rating: 4 Stars
Produced, photographed, and directed by Kristen Bjorn. Music by Matt Locke. Starring Erik Flower, Paulao do Picao, Alex Ribeiro, Jed Willcox, Jean Franko, Rocky Oliveira, Jason Kingsley, Matthieu Costa, Marcello Lars, Max Veneziano, Xavier Montenegro, David Salazar, Bruno Din, Gabriel Ventura, Matthias Vannelli, Carlos Caballero, Victor Cowboy, and Sergio Castillo.
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Two threesomes and three foursomes erupt out of swift, lean cruising vignettes immaculately crafted by director Kristen Bjorn. The setting is Bjorn's personal erosphere, a universe of old stone buildings, cobbled streets, seductive passageways, and men on the prowl. The interracial cast is a roundup of 18 uncut, muscular specimens from four continents; most wear black leather jackets, blue denim pants, and little else.

All five sex scenes, whose imagery taps into Tom of Finland and Jean Genet, unfold like primal dreams. The third and fourth have exceptional power. The former, nominated for GVN's 2006

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rophy for Best Group Scene, begins with white South African Jason Kingsley (Bjorn's Male Tales, Buckshot's Beyond Perfect), looking glamorous and hot, walking down an Old World street. He attracts Matthieu Costa and Marcello Lars, a couple who stalk

him, then Max Veneziano, who flings his house key from a balcony. As Veneziano and Kingsley kiss, strip, suck,

and fuck, Costa and Lars watch through a window, make love, and begin to fuck. When Veneziano invites them inside, the four-way action includes a long, ecstatic double-penetration of Costa.

In the fourth scene, Xavier Montenegro and David Salazar fold a real-life one-on-one encounter into imagined sex with couple Bruno Din and Gabriel Ventura. The best vignettes here and elsewhere are medium shots depicting all participants working in unison, bodies fused into a living, sculptural heat source. Obeying Bjornian tradition, Manville runs 150 minutes, includes lots of easy, reciprocal fucking, and offers five dozen cumshots.