Some days it feels like the world is really only divided into two types of people: those who have hang-ups about sex, and those who don't; those who resist the "sinful" urges of their bodies, and those who seek to indulge them every chance they get.
Larry Levenson was clearly one of the latter. This was a man who had a vision for a new generation of sexual freedom: a club, open to all, where "free-thinking, free-living adult couples" could hook up and trade partners freely over the course of an evening, where cunnilingus was a more common form of greeting than handshakes, and where the buffet had less variety on offer than the infamous "mattress room." Would it surprise you if I said this was a tale from the 1970s?
Welcome to "American Swing" (opening locally as "Swap Swap"), a documentary that tracks the rise and fall of Levenson and his legendary Manhattan swingers club, Plato's Retreat. Directors Jon Hart and Matthew Kaufman track down a lot of the club's staff and clientele to reminisce about the good old lays, and unearth reams of old super-8 footage from behind closed doors to paint a vivid, often hilarious picture of one of New York City's seediest establishments.