Okay, okay, maybe you’re getting tired of seeing nothing but good reviews for Xana and Dax on my blog. But I’m not! Here are bits and pieces of another very warm review; this time from Abby Ehmann, who some of you may know as Editrix Abby. Says Abby:
“They look and sound and have sex not just like “real people,” but people I’m actually friends with. They talk about how they met, how much they enjoy each other’s bodies and their general love and appreciation for each other in a way that you won’t see in any other ‘porn movie.’ “
I really like that Abby put porn movie in quotes. Ten years ago I called myself a pornographer with a certain roguish pride, “No, it’s not erotica, it’s porn. Cunt and cocks and cum. It’s porn.” (I wanted to distinguish what I did from films that promised the goods, but never delivered.) Not anymore. Porn has become embarrassing (if not down right upsetting) on so many levels it’s sometimes hard to find words. That more than one person has said X&D doesn’t feel “porny” is very gratifying.
Returning to Abby’s review:
“When she sucks his cock, he looks positively beatific; their 69 is almost too intimate. And when they do it doggie style, Xana experiences an eyes-rolling-into-the-back-of-her-head orgasm. Whew! What you see on screen is two people very much in love and truly enjoying themselves both spiritually and sexually. It is hot!“
Again Abby is picking up on something I very much wanted to get across. In crafting X&D, I wanted to create a film that felt intensely voyeuristic, intensely private, but I wanted the audience to feel at ease with the intimacy. I wanted to find a way to tell the viewer it’s okay to want to look, it’s okay to want to see, it’s okay to feel turned on.
This is very similar to what Audacia Ray said in e-mail: “[Y]ou’ve managed to do a very delicate thing, which is that you’ve created a film that feels naughty, like the viewer is seeing something he or she isn’t supposed to see, without making the act of watching feel shameful.”
There is a tendency to discount the nice things that people say, but when you hear it twice, you start to let yourself think it might be true!
Near the end of her review, Abby turns her attention to the production design/art direction.
“It was nice not to see the usual tacky LA ranch house or odd personal effects surrounding the sex scenes and be able to focus on the couple themselves. (Sorry, but I am often thrown by particularly egregious lamps, carpets and tchotchkes in the background. Bad taste is so not sexy!)”
That strange brand of aspirational art direction that is practiced in Porn Valley has to be one of the most bizarre aspects of “the industry”. There always seems to be an awkward mismatch between the way the talent looks and talks, the cars they drive and the houses they live in. And the tchotchkes always seem like they’re a 15 year old boy’s idea of classy.
I think the approach is some sort of bastard child of Hugh Hefner’s waspy contrivances and Bob Guccione’s italianine* fantasies, but back in the Seventies, when Hef and Bob were establishing their signature looks, they were working with real money. You can’t do a the club/palazzo/chateau fantasia on the cheap (well you can, but it looks like crap), so we try to do “no art direction” art direction (in the hopes of not giving the audience a reason to start giggling). It’s nice that Abby noticed. (And even nicer she didn’t giggle!)
You can read the rest of Abby’s very nice review at Eros-Zine.com.
Thanks Abby!
-TC
* Mrs. C is Brooklyn born and bred. Italianine is what happens when italianate goes too far.
