Interior. Leather Bar. has made headlines as an attempt by genre-hopping directors Travis Mathews and James Franco to reconstruct the legendary “lost” footage cut (to avoid an X rating) from William Friedkin’s crime thriller Cruising — the controversial 1980 film starring Al Pacino as a straight undercover cop in New York’s leather world. But this new film is far more than two cinephiles’ academic exercise.

Yes, they reimagine the infamous bar scene — with actor Val Lauren playing a version of Pacino — and bring a non-judgmental gaze onto the explicit backroom frolicking. But the filmmakers cleverly weave the re-creation into a meta-drama about the making of the 2012 scene, revealing its participants’ reservations and excitement and creating the quasi-doc about Hollywood, censorship, and sexual mores. Interior. Leather Bar. may have a famous controversy and James Franco as its attention-grabbers, but at heart it is a rumination on what separates creative and sexual expression, and private and public performance.