Broken

Studio: Teravision
Director: Dave Navarro
Cast: Sasha Grey, Audrey Bitoni, Jenna Haze, Tommy Gunn, Marco Banderas, Spyder Jonez, Lisa Daniels, Victoria Sin, Kayla Paige

Portions of this review originally appeared on Fleshbot

Broken, the directorial debut of Dave Navarro, better known as Los Angeles’ Official Guitar Player, opens with Sasha Grey on the bathroom floor, sobbing and masturbating. She is left-handed. Why does she choose to lose moisture from both halves of hger body at the same time? She’s Broken.

The equation of sex with despair, as is fashionable in porn movies lately, is something I don’t understand. After she’s finished on the bathroom floor, for example, Grey collapses in a sad heap of moroseness. It would be one thing if she worked through her depression with a good wank (and see how I’ve suspended my disbelief, try doing that sort of thing while weeping openly), but it doesn’t seem to do her any good.

That’s not to say she doesn’t look good while doing it. Grey is sylphlike, vulnerable, and inviting. But if the porn fantasy is that she’s also accessible, couldn’t her accessibility come as a result of her being slutty rather than without hope? Guess that might be a different movie.

Eventually everyone with a high enough profile who has an interest in the porn world will direct a movie. Screech did it, and we’re just waiting for Mr. Belding and David Spade to jump in. But though the mood of Broken is dark, Navarro has brought something new to the table. A few things happen in this movie that haven’t been seen before, but not so many that it ceases to be a porn movie.

When she’s through, Grey enters a Kubrickian overexposed room and has a petulant conversation with some bruiser who doesn’t cotton to her tartness. Their conversation is subtitled in Italian. Why? Just in case Ennio Morricone drops by for soundtrack tips. Oh, and because the couple’s relationship is Broken.

At one point the bruiser picks Sasha up by her head and lifts her a foot off the ground. He could have just told her to move.

Though he kisses her afterward, she still retreats to the bathroom to shoot up. Because the movie is called Broken, she needs a fix.

Time passes and we arrive at a porn set in which Tommy Gunn plays the pizza guy to Jenna Haze’s lady answering the door in her lingerie. The camera tracks around to several scenes being shot at once. It’s a cool effect, as we watch Marco Banderas holding up his own camera while Grey holds up other things, a cameraman zooms in, yet another camera captures the master shot, and Navarro directs, shirtless but hatted.

It’s like Dave Navarro’s Porn Circus.

When Sasha has finished with Banderas, Navarro directs her to help out the other couples on the set, as if she has completed her art project early and the teacher sends her around to check on the other kids. She aids a threesome with Teravision owner Evan Seinfeld.

This extended sequence is the heart of the film, and is a clever means of getting the porn-standard amount of scenes in. Grey returns to her apartment, having been empowered by her porn experience, and confronts her Babelfish boyfriend.

Then there’s a twist ending!

I admit that my prejudice about porn with a bad attitude is my own. I still think you can get more flies (or, in this case, popshots) with honey (or, in this case, a pleasant disposition). But I will admit that some people do behave this way all the time and that Broken is a fascinating movie directed like a music video and featuring oversaturated and tasty talent.

It also has a unique narrative style that is refreshing and compelling (but can’t be used again).