The Nature of Sex

Death, for bacteria, is not inevitable. Protect a bacterium from predators, and provide it with adequate food and space to grow, and it would continue living–and reproducing asexually–forever. But a paramecium (a slightly more advanced single-cell organism), under the same ideal conditions, would stop dividing after about 200 generations–and die. Death, for paramecia and their offspring, is inevitable. Unless they have sex. If at any point during that 200 or so generations, two of the progeny of our paramecium have sex, their clock will be reset to zero. They and their progeny are granted another 200 generations. Those who fail to have sex eventually die. Immortality for bacteria is automatic; for all other living beings–including humans–immortality depends on having sex. But why is this so? Why must death be inevitable? And what is the connection between death and sexual reproduction?

Borja Brun, director and filmmaker, provide us with his masterpiece, a film like no other before. Diet of Sex is an experience, is a love story between Ágata and Marc told through sex. Ágata suffers from a psychological disorder (anhedonia) which prevents her from experiencing pleasure in all aspects of her life. Marc, through the use food endeavours to help her to overcome her problem. Diet of Sex aims to bring to light that food in itself is not an aphrodisiac, yet the way in which we prepare it can be. It impacts our sexual appetite and thus how we interact on an intimate level. A culinary, sexual adventure through a variety of flavours. A plea towards the normality of sex in cinema. A vindication to overcome a (deeply-rooted) social taboo and to envisage explicit adult sex scenes of an instinctive nature.