Studio: Naughty America
Director: Brett Brando
Cast: Sasha Grey, Satine Phoenix, Pinky Lee, Dana DeArmond, Adrianna Nicole, Lorelei Lee, Tommy Pistol
Portions of this review originally appeared on Fleshbot
This movie features my personal Power Station, Cream, and Damn Yankees of porn, a tasty cast in a series of scenes that progress literally from dark to light (or at least from brunettes to blondes) as well as back in time.
Director Brett Brando put together a sequence of vignettes with setups that are just a little more complex than other gonzo movies, each playing to the strengths and whimsies of the people performing them. I can’t think of a recent movie that was better cast with people I like, or that seemed to target my personal tastes as well.
Further, the progression of scenes was particularly thoughtful, as we will see.
Sasha Grey is a mopey teen. She wakes up in her makeup in a squalid Hollywood apartment. Her dialogue sounds like a bad MySpace page. “Sunset Strip?” she grouses. “More like Sunset Drip.”
At this point I was ready to fast forward, because there was nothing to suggest this wasn’t another of the breed of self-important Sylvia Plath porn scenes that was only funny unintentionally.
But then a biker enters in a cloud of dry ice and fucks her “hungry pussy”.
The sex itself was just what we would expect from the precociously dirty Sasha Grey, who knows the lingo and delivers it poutily, as is the current fashion. But the scene is just slightly wacky, and it is that intent that makes it fun to watch.
The first scene is also the darkest of the movie.
Next comes Satine Phoenix as a restaurant manager who is having trouble with the help. Before she can fire her insubordinate employee, however, he tells her that what she really needs is to be fucked.
Even though we know this to be universally true, from diners to the Vatican to the International Space Station, it still seems a little uncomfortable to hear it, like a hoary porn trope that is part of the shorthand but still off-putting and past its welcome. That changes when Phoenix pulls her handyman over the bar and takes control of the scene.
The third scene is the most surreal and, when I take advantage of my Constitutional right to create an adult awards show, I will nominate Pinky Lee as Best Actress for her portrayal of a showgirl who fucks someone else’s fan. The scene is silly and bittersweet, and Lee actually tap dances.
Then Dana DeArmond intercepts the man who has been surreptitiously leaving mash notes at her door.
“I know you!” she says sweetly. “You’re my boyfriend!” Indeed it is her boyfriend Daniel, and their chemistry is apparent. Both act like they feel lucky.
Finally, Adrianna Nicole and Lorelei Lee, two punky blondes who can get up to some real graphic nastiness in other movies, are seen here braiding each other’s hair in a superbly kitschy pink bedroom when both realize they are dating the same guy.
They spring a trap for Tommy Pistol, who plays a Brooklyn doofus.
It’s not as if this movie was directed to the hilt, or stage managed to the nth degree. It is instead often wonderfully sloppy and improvisational, and the players seem to be having a great time. This in turn makes me happy, because I like it when people enjoy their jobs. Because so much porn can seem negative, or not the zesty enterprise I think it should be, I realize that I am exactly the target audience for this sort of fun, bubbly movie.
“You cad,” Lorelei Lee ad libs.
“Did you call me a cow?” asks Pistol, and Lee laughs out of character.
The three end in a menage a trois-cum-pillow fight, free of “Come fuck my hungry pussy” and super-serious lines of that ilk. The movie makes you wonder what the sixth scene might have been had there been time for one. Naughty Flipside is the feel-good movie of the summer!
(Also, if the guy from Prospero’s Books had been in it, it would be the Gielgud movie of the summer.)
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