Exhumed from the annals of Australian celluloid by organisers of the queer film festival circuit, The Set is regarded as the first gay film made in Australia. Screened in 1970 and candidly displaying alternative sexualities and sexual fluidity without thematic censorship or moralising, The Set quite expectedly sparked controversy and widespread debate upon its release.

The plot revolves around Paul, an aspiring designer who walks into a store owned by high profile designer Marie and offers himself to be her protégé. She becomes attracted to the young man and propelled by her sexual motivations accepts his offer. Paul is quickly thrust into Sydney’s eccentric upper crust known as ‘the set’ and in a sexually permissive environment begins to experiment with other men. He then lands himself a design project and seeks the assistance of student architect Tony, an attractive masculine hunk who moves in with him, to meet the critical deadline. Despite managing to seduce every woman he meets Tony is self serving, arrogant and sexually demanding, but unable to ‘perform’ effectively in bed with women. When his carnal urges are unmet by the women in his life (including Paul’s cousin and aunt among others), he emotionally and sexually exploits Paul who happens to be infatuated with him. For macho Tony, Paul is both an object of contempt and convenient sexual release.

The film continues to explore this volatile relationship of sexual favours, while weaving in several other narratives and characters to provoke an amusing 70s style shock treatment with overt displays of infidelity, nudity, prostitution, suicide, drugs and alternative sexual practices on screen. Painfully B-Grade, The Set comes across as a student film with shoddy camera work and terribly engineered sound where you can hardly hear the dialogue for the music. The script is also awful with far too many complicated narratives, and the characterisation was thin (perhaps intentionally as the film was largely a comment about sex rather than personality). It also appears to want to parallel Breakfast at Tiffany’s in its beatnik and mod style, however, due to the film’s roughness it fails to hit the mark.

As a document of the sexual revolution though, the film’s narrative does carry a message of sexual liberation and questions the mores of sexuality. The last scene of the movie for example sees Paul’s estranged girlfriend learning of his homosexual exploits at a ‘set’ party. Unperturbed, she joins him and the others of ‘the set’ dancing and slithering in an orgy-like revel in a swimming pool. Although it is amusing to see a 70s film struggle with such overt sexual themes, The Set expresses an apathy and frustration with the restrictive norms of sexual conduct and morality during a time where most of the sexual adventures depicted in the film were in fact criminal acts in Australia.