DVD Review: Wicked’s “Porn Valley”

We had to invent a new tag for this flick because it is, we think, the closest a corporate adult movie has come to a thesis statement of how the Porno-American community wants the world to see it. "Porn Valley" is also, we're guessing, a thinly-veiled coming of age story about how one screenwriter learned to stop worrying and love the popshot.

Read our review after the gap. - GP

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Porn Valley

Studio: Wicked
Director: Michael Raven
Cast: Kaylani Lei, Barrett Blade, Evan Stone, Carmel Moore, Gianna Lynn, Monica Mayhem, Riley Evans

Review by Gram Ponante

Thinking first that Wicked Pictures had commissioned a tribute movie about one of Fleshbot's regular features, I was eager to tear the package open and find out how to get my royalties. Then the elegantly art-diirected cover, featuring a clothed Kaylani Lei, made me recognize this film for what it was: a couples' movie.

"Since I have destroyed all who have ever loved me," I reasoned, "perhaps I should watch this. You know, for tips."

The movie begins with Kaylani Lei's voiceover. "In my 26 years I had seeen maybe three pornographic movies," she says. "And I was scared of it." She talks about Brazilian waxes and carnal moans, all the trappings of the porn ouevre. The audience is deposited without explanation into a blue-tinged sex scene.

We are watching a scene from the pornography that is destroying our narrator's relationship. She watches in disgust as her boyfriend of five years drinks it in. A Wicked DVD box sits on the table.

She explains that, since moving to L.A. from Louisiana (it is hard to believe Kaylani Lei as a Louisiana girl, but harder still to believe she's from Cape Cod, which she is), her boyfriend has subscribed to a casual sex website. She confronts him. He admits he is a sex addict. The relationship is over. Way to support your partner in his time of need, Kaylani.

"Fucking sex addict," she tells her girlfriend. She wonders aloud if pornography, like the kind that possessed her mate, was like marijuana, "a gateway drug to more harsher things." Her friend advises her to date.

She does, and gets into an online relationship with a man who seems compatible, charming, and intelligent. He also directs porn movies. She meets him anyway. He explains that some people use casting couches, but not him. Then, in a flashback to a routine starlet interview, he explains yet again that there will never be another Jenna. The starlet thanks him amid a jangle of bracelets.

She probes him during dinner. It is like a softball infomercial interview. Are drugs orevalent in the porn industry? No more than in Hollywood. Do you think having sex for money is psychologically damaging? I'm all for sexual expression, not repression, baby.

The film thus far is a little dark, not in tone but in hue. It is slightly hard to see. But the movie avoids other inexplicable couples' porn tropes by not being unnecessarily serious. There are laughs and there is some wonderful acting by Barrett Blade (the pornographer) and Lei.

Director Michael Raven takes his time with the scenes, and it is worth mentioning the screenwriter, Jennifer Allison. It seems that Porn Valley can't but be the story of her own journey to Los Angeles. If not, hers was a fortuitous meeting with Wicked, because this script made it onto the screen wiithout being mangled by a hack director or porn performers unused to acting.

Now and then the movie does feel like an ad for the Porn Valley Chamber of Commerce. As Lei meets Blade's friends, she muses, "These people were witty, friendly, polite... Just normal people." She realizes that it is not porn that is the problem with relationships, it is deception. Time and again Blade proves his integrity to her.

The movie ends happily, a porn-positive flick if I've ever seen one. I was wondering, as Lei and Blade consummate their relationship, if he would pull out and come on her chest or if the movie would dare to be different. Raven compromises, but you'll have to watch it to find out how.

· Wicked Pictures (wicked.com)
· Buy "Porn Valley" (gamelink.com)

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Previously: DVD Review: "The Visitors"