Ruth Beckermann’s feature uses the 1906 novel Josefine Mutzenbacher or The Story of a Viennese Whore (published anonymously) as a starting point to grapple with male sexuality.

The sight of adult men inhabiting a young girl’s sexual life are equal parts disconcerting and darkly absurd. The casting couch, too often used as a tool of abusive men, is here a site of male discomfort. In an attempt to fill the silences left by the director, the men offer responses to what they have read, many personal, ranging from the lurid to the sensitively insightful.