On_Line

You've got to wonder if the person who first hooked up via modem ever imagined so many people would be hooking up purely for sexual thrills. Yet that's precisely what the protagonists of this sexy, smart and omnisexual drama do. Welcome to Intercon-X, an adult website where people connect for hot digicam chats with online escorts (this, of course, being the 21st century equivalent of phone sex) and exhibitionists. Among the clients and employees are straights, bisexuals and gays.

Take Al (John Fleck, one of the famed NEA Four), an insulated, celibate gay man who plays naughty Nazi for Ed (the adorable Eric Millegan) a young, lonely college boy stuck at a homophobic Ohio college. At first they meet for fantasy and finance but soon become one another's closest confidants. Can online lead to on-life? That's a question even John (Josh Hamilton), one of the site's founders, ponders after he samples the goods one night. By film's end, everyone in this community of digital faces and voices is faced with dramatic, grave and joyous decisions... ones that aren't listed in tech manuals or FAQs.

Cleverly directed with technological savvy – all the film's apartment interiors were shot in a Brooklyn building so the actors, in separate rooms with separate cameras running, could interact "online" in real time – On_Line, which caused a buzz at the Sundance Film Festival, captures a revolutionary moment in history. One you'll get hotter than a hard drive during, no less! Modem guy, if you only knew!

Lawrence Ferber