“A Woman’s POV”: Madison Young Shows Us Down There from On High

July 29, 2010
LANK

If anything, Madison Young revolutionizes the male-dominated POV genre by creating a safe space where the bottom half of the screen isn't filled with some dude's pot belly. (And the top half ain't bad, either.)

Lucky: A Woman's POV

Studio: Real Queer Productions
Director: Madison Young
Starring: Dylan Ryan, Sarah Blake, Casey Grey, Akira Raine, Kimberlee Cline, Scarlett Chaos, Dylan Ryan, Madison Young

Review by: Gram Ponante

"It's the lap of luxury here at Circus Circus in Vegas," says Madison Young at the beginning of "Lucky: A Woman's P.O.V.," but before you begin questioning what kind of laps Young has been in to make such a preposterous claim, out pops Sarah Blake.

Point of View movies are usually made by men to answer the call of consumers who just don't want to see a guy's face at all. There is a also a raincoater factor that ties the mouth-breathery of POV videos to ancient and simpler times when porn wasn't so out in the open.

But Young brings a new twist to the genre. We know exactly who she is (she checks in with the camera constantly) and she takes the creep factor right out of the equation. This might be difficult for some, but my advice is to just think about what Young's Circus Circus neighbors might have been doing, and that's creepy enough.

Anyway, the delightful Sarah Blake eats Young like a piece of delicious spanikopita at a Greek wedding.

Shot on $180 Flip cameras at the 2010 Adult Entertainment Expo, "Lucky" is as much a video blog as a sex movie, and as such speaks to the personal nature of pornography emerging now that media is cheaper and cheaper.

In an interview with herself, Young is enthusiastic about the people she's meeting at the Expo:

"...people who want to be documenting real sex and real connection and real pleasure... it's better than the artifice of the once-removed or twice-removed version of what sex is."

While this may be better for Young, I would have appreciated something a little more removed than a handheld and jittery camera; I'm still not convinced that the mind is the biggest erogenous zone, and I would have liked to see all the parts I love framed better.

In fact, I actually got more of a sense of artifice out of the fact that Young kept explaining things to me. This is a problem with porn that wants you to know it's being progressive, and sometimes sex positivism positively exes the viewer out of the picture, as the filmmaker/blogger/activist trips over the equipment in order to tell you how healthy all of this really is.

But for this habit of needing to comment on the action rather than letting it speak for itself, "Lucky" is packed with people happy to be there. Dylan Ryan, the amiable newcomer Kimberlee Cline, Scarlett Chaos, and Young herself are in fine form.

· Good Vibrations (goodreleasing.com)
· Buy "Lucky: A Woman's POV" (gamelink.com)