Crazy for You: Kelli McCarty in "Faithless"

Kelli McCarty, star of Paul Thomas' new movie "Faithless," evokes a Golden Age porn queen but with millennial sensibilities. So she is like a drug and a trainwreck at the same time.

Faithless

Studio: Vivid
Director: Paul Thomas
Cast: Kelli McCarty, Daisy Marie, Voodoo, Kelly Leigh, Steven St. Croix, Jennifer Dark, James Deen, Herschel Savage

Review by: Gram Ponante

"Faithless" is not a feel-good movie, unless movies like "In the Bedroom" were fun for you. But it is full of uncomfortable situations and vigorous sex that you know meant something for the performers.

"Faithless" opens with Calli (McCarty) primping for a performance; the performance is makeup sex with poor, muddled Nico (Voodoo). Turning on the waterworks (as this is not a squirting movie, it must be pointed out that the waterworks are from her eyes), Calli gets Nico right where she wants him, which is to be discovered by her husband, Danny (Steven St. Croix), and Nico's girlfriend in her carnal embrace. Was it worth it, Voodoo?

It all started innocently enough. Calli is Danny's trophy wife, hated by his daughter, Sarah, played by Daisy Marie. Nico comes up to the cabin in the mountains to be with Sarah but her dad, proud of his hot new wife, shows her off to his daughter's beau. It proves to be Danny's undoing.

Already there are more elements to this porn movie, more setup and plot, more credible situations, than others. Naturally Sarah hates her stepmom, naturally Nico's buddy, James Deen, wants in on Sarah, naturally Sarah overhears all this exposition.

And then there are Danny's best friend Simon (Herschel Savage) and his own trophy wife Terry (Kelly Leigh). Simon is a sad sack whose wife and best friend waste no time availing each other of her fellatio skills.

But despite the family tension and Simon's dire warning to Nico that he hopes Danny doesn't own a shotgun, Nico and Sarah do manage to steal away to a bucolic spot and go fishing. Ass fishing.

But the idyll doesn't last. Calli has captured Nico's heart, you see, and back in L.A. she calls him, having stolen his number from her stepdaughter's phone. The cad, he comes right over. But she is playing mind games with him.

"I just wanted to see if you'd come," she says, leaving.

But lest you think Calli is the fly in the ointment, Sarah, too, seems particularly prone to unhingement. We end up feeling sorry for Danny, even though we know that he, too, is a filthy adulterer. Of particular resonance is a scene where Danny and Calli try to get their groove on but daughter Sarah keeps interrupting, asking for cash. The viewer is left wondering who he wants to hate or fuck more.

Until finally we are left with a portrait of Danny as a guy who finds crazy women comforting (at least that's what I got out of it). After a landmark rape-in-so-many-words scene that stands in for an argument between the married couple, Danny then goes to his old standby, Terry, for a top-off. By this point we're rooting for no one.

And when, loopy as she is, Calli ties all the loose ends together, we see her scorched-earth logic. You're looking at the generic boxcover and thinking, "Are we talking about the same movie?"

In Hollywood, February is traditionally the month in which all the also-ran movies are released. But, much as I am loathe to say it so soon after January's AVN awards, "Faithless" is my choice to clean up next year; its themes of Women Are Unstable, Men Are Assholes really looks like America these days. And I would give Kelli McCarty and Steven St. Croix acting trophies, because it's hard to focus during a rape.

· Vivid (Vivid.com)
· Buy "Faithless" (gamelink.com)

Send an email to Gram Ponante, the author of this post, at gram@fleshbot.com.

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