“But the Austin duo's journey into the community at Florida's Sunsport Gardens Family Nudist Resort is not about lurid, lascivious voyeurism (as one resident notes, there aren't any pretty people naked). Instead, as with all their work, it's about a community.”
“It's not the nudity, per se, that makes Naked Gardens interesting, either visually, narratively, or philosophically. It's simply that it's what defines the outer borders of this community, within which Bresnan and Lucas find personalities rather than drama.”
“Too often, documentaries confuse tension with raw emotion but here, among moments of sadness, joy, and even strife, Bresnan and Lucas capture that rarest of moods: contentment.”
“...the new documentary Naked Gardens, from directors Patrick Bresnan and Ivete Lucas (Pahokee), provides a fascinating look at a niche community with nothing to hide.”
“...given the subject matter and the joy on display, to not celebrate this loving, liberated society as they choose to be seen would be a travesty. Be who you are and embrace the joy.”
“Although one suspects Sunsport Gardens Naturist Resort has seen better days, Bresnan and Lucas have never been ones to look back as vérité filmmakers of the first order, spending time with a variety of residents of different ages, it becomes apparent those
who have found their way there likely have, living life on the edge in a far different way that you’d imagine – uninhibited perhaps but only because they feel there’s nothing left to lose.”
“Naked Gardens” taps into anxiety over exposing oneself emotionally in a culture where that isn’t the norm and when Lucas and Bresnan’s traditionally unhurried style allows for epiphanies to happen in their own time, it also
has the generous effect in their latest of not imposing any rush to judgment in the space that they’ve created for their subjects.”
“Ivete Lucas and Patrick Bresnan’s fascinating, eye-opening, poignant, candid, insightful, 90-minute, 2021 verité documentary that explores the lives and motivations of a diverse group of like-minded people”
“Ivete Lucas and Patrick Bresnan’s Naked Gardens is a purely voyeuristic hangout with an array of, ahem, unglamorous nudists, an ordeal by potbelly that is inevitably surreal.
(A Christmas party in which a naked middle-aged “elf” hands out presents to clothed children is a moment even Werner Herzog might find excessive.)”