Blind Date 2.0

Paul is a fellow oriented towards handicrafts and the technical. In an initial portrait of the same name (Paul, 2022), filmmaker Jan Soldat has already met him in his apartment. Against the backdrop of a television set showing gay porn, the likeable early retiree-to-be let us in on part in his life: as someone who is bisexual, leading his life in a self-determined way, quite decidedly aware of his sexual preferences and, after descriptions of hobby model building, finally masturbating. In Blind Date 2.0 (2022), Paul once again receives the filmmaker at his home – this time in order to shoot a sex date. Soldat sets standards in the cinematic treatment of privacy; in a candid encounter he shows a man who cares, both in the details and the larger picture. So we see Paul vacuuming under the bed and pushing cabinets together to make space, and again the model airplane that had already been removed in Paul (“too dull”) disappears from the picture before the arrival of the man with whom he has arranged to have sex. Far from the spectacularly pornographic, but also from amateur porn, there is room given over first of all to clarify preferences, and consensus is established. Since both men are rather on the passive side and the double dildo fails to win over the visitor, they agree on a blowjob and find practicable middle ground in mutual masturbation. Blind Date 2.0 does not aim at producing arousal, but constitutes a doubly empathetic approach – that of the filmmaker to his protagonist, and that of the protagonist to his rather monosyllabic visitor. In targeted, unspectacular framing, the film captures the sex-positive in the ordinary, in the non-standardized, and above all in the context of social interaction: comprehensible, moving, and with a memorable cigarette afterwards. (Katharina Mueller)

Translation: John Wojtowicz