Serafima Serafimova

Adultery. Whether you see it as an unforgivable act of betrayal or just a bit icky, most of us (and I’m very much including myself here) tend to indulge in fictitious stories about affairs from time to time. Perhaps it’s about getting lost in a hot fantasy you could never fulfill in your real life, or just the excitement that comes from the illicit act itself, affairs on screen or paper are a turn-on and I’m here for them. 

But this is an adultery story in which the word “sex” is never uttered, nor is the act ever actually had. In fact, the entire animation is a sensual and slippery way of showing (not telling) urges that shouldn’t be felt, let alone voiced, making it even more thrilling. Directed by Marianne Bergeonneau, Lauriane Montpert, Mélina Mandon, Cloé Peyrebrune, and Elvira Taussac, Wet is masterfully crafted, both visually and auditorily, with painstaking attention to detail, and the final result is an actual pleasure. So sit back and get ready for 6 sexy minutes of fun naughtiness that will penetrate your senses and leave you tingly in all the right places.

A routine massage sets the scene.

The story takes the audience on a visceral tour inside a spa, where a woman is enjoying a massage. When the masseur’s wedding ring accidentally slides off his oily finger, she takes it and runs off into the steamy depths of the expansive building, leading them both into a fleshy maze of seduction and desire. 

Rendered in 3D with bubbly, voluptuous, and somehow always moist-looking characters, Wet is dialogue-free and its narrative can be neatly summed up in a single sentence. But rather than being restrained by the simple premise and lack of lines, there is a sense that the dimensions of the physical space where the seduction takes place, and the emotional journey the male character goes on, have somehow been pulled and stretched, simultaneously defying the laws of physics and the sacrament of marriage. It all points to the fact that our lives are often defined by one single moment in which everything can go orgasmically right, or cataclysmically wrong, and the quintet of storytellers has captured it flawlessly. 

Practically every shot of the film is suggestive—without ever crossing into explicit.

Wet is a short that oozes with brilliantly clever details and funny scenes – from the way the masseur’s fingers dig into the woman’s back, with a soft crack of the knuckles, to the man in the steam room happily stroking his bulging belly and (my personal favorite) the navel piercing buried in big folds of soft, pink flesh. But despite the jaw-dropping quality of the visuals, their effect on the audience wouldn’t be half as powerful without the utterly gratifying sound design, by co-directors Marianne Bergeonneau, and Mélina Mandon. 

Famously, good sound design is paired so perfectly with the visuals that it goes unnoticed, but in Wet it shamelessly, and deservedly takes center stage. Every touch, stroke, and moan is amped up to the max, giving the sound effects an ASMR quality that tickles its way under your skin and gives the animation an almost touchable, even lickable, quality of life. 

This marriage of fun, beautifully crafted visuals and yummy sound design truly is a match made in heaven. It’s also what makes Wet an absolute delight of a film and the filmmakers ones to admire and watch out for.