Netflix added an Argentinian movie called Desire or Desearas to its streaming service in the U.S. way back in December, but over the past few days there have been complaints on social media about a scene in the movie. The scene in question depicts young women (under the age of 10) playing around before one figures out how to have a climax with a pillow. People have complained the scene is child porn, but director Diego Kaplan has now explained why he feels the scene is not intended to be porn. He said:
Desire is a film. When we see a shark eating a woman on film, no one thinks the woman really died or that the shark was real. We work in a world of fiction; and, for me, before being a director comes being a father.
The movie kicks off with a scene where the two sisters are watching a cowboy movie on TV in their pajamas. Both sisters mimic the cowboy scene on TV by sitting on pillows and pretending their pillow is a horse, which one sister ends up using as a masturbation tool. They are clothed during this activity, but the one sister has a sexual awakening during the scene while her sister looks on, bewildered. Their mother is called in after the young girl is sitting in the fetal position. She thinks she's had a seizure and takes her to the hospital, but the adult Ofelia character later states that was the day she had her first orgasm and that it was a great life moment for her character, a feeling she's been seeking every single day since.
Created as an erotic fantasy film, Desire mostly follows two estranged adult sisters, Ofelia and Lucia, who come together for Lucia's wedding. Soon after, Ofelia begins coveting her sister's partner and begins feeling deep things inside, which is how the rest of the film ties into the opening scene. Still, some people on social media have begun complaining about the film and specifically its introductory scene, including posts such as the following:
One online blogger at PJ Media even put in a complaint to the FBI alleging the scene is child porn.
In his statement to Indiewire, Diego Kaplan also elaborated that the scene in question was not explained to the young ladies filming the scene and rather they were asked simply to copy the cowboy show. He said:
Of course this scene was filmed using a trick, which was that the girls were copying a cowboy scene from a film by John Ford. The girls never understood what they were doing, they were just copying what they were seeing on the screen. No adult interacted with the girls, other than the child acting coach. Everything was done under the careful surveillance of the girls' mothers. Because I knew this scene might cause some controversy at some point, there is "Making Of" footage of the filming of the entire scene. Everything works inside the spectators' heads, and how you think this scene was filmed will depend on your level of depravity.
The movie itself is definitely TV-MA, and there are plenty of nude moments, including a full-frontal shot of a dead man naked in a pool, and plenty of moments where women have their breasts out, while tanning on the beach or in the bedroom. The movie was released as Desearas: Al Hombre De Tu Hermana in Argentina back in 2017. It had been on Netflix for months prior to any complaints, and was still available streaming on Netflix at the time of this writing. Netflix has had other issues in the movies department, but we'll let you know if anything else happens with Desire as the story develops.
