The Fashionistas

John "Buttman" Stagliano makes great porn because he was a porn fan first...and is still a porn fan. He publishes Buttman" magazine (probably the best and most cutting edge out there), runs Evil Angel Video, has starred in an s***load of vids, and has directed some of the best vids still out there. He's proud of his achievements and he continues to push the edge. Thus...Exhibit A: "Fashionistas".

The film (yes, film) is difficult to categorize, but it is an exploration of perception and perversion. It stars the incredible Belladonna, the current Queen of Extreme, and Rocco Siffredi, the Italian actor/director who is a living porn legend. It has a strong Sadism/Masochism bent and, though released under the Evil Angel label, is not the typical Evil Angel product, though EE is not your "typical" porn shingle, either.

Clearly a labor of love for Stagliano, the film is very rough, fetishistic, realistic and psychologically confronting. The sex is as hardcore as it gets with an emphasis on anal.

The lighting and production design are top notch, and Belladonna's performance (as Jesse) is heavy going indeed.

Although I am not an S&M aficionado, I still found the journey itself a very worthy one. Prudes be warned, though.

Like another reviewer, I'm no spring chicken. I remember when there was really no porn, followed by the arrival of 'Blow-Up' and 'I Am Curious, Yellow' and then a lot more porn, and then the ambitious porn of the 70s, and finally the sinking of the mess into sub-genre 'specialties' that exists today. I consider myself a pretty jaded fan, and have seen a fair bit of rough and tumble stuff over this period.

When I heard about this movie, I was definitely looking forward to it, hoping that perhaps it would lead to a renaissance of sorts. I actually saw the show in Las Vegas before the movie, and that abetted my interest.

So…what did I find in Fashionistas? It was definitely high concept, artistically oriented sexually oriented material. Production values, lighting, blocking are all at the upper boundary of what you'll find in the industry. The individuals involved are attractive, fashions provocative and edgy. I'm not sure I'd say there's a story in the sense of a Dickens novel, but there is definitely an attempt to create context and atmosphere, which I think is all one should hope for in a porn production.

So what's not to like? For me, the whole thing didn't come together, at least not in a way that resonated with me. The movie was long, much longer than it should have been. Many sex scenes ran too long. The start of one coincided with the beginning of a workout, and was still running when I shut the treadmill down. Attractive people performing wild, rough sex, I found, does not necessarily make for an 'attractive' product, although I'm at a bit of a loss to explain why. I've seen and enjoyed 'nastiness', I guess the specific tone of the nastiness here, along with the length of the scenes and movie worked against my interest.

Watching the movie also made me reflect on the evolution of porn. Anal sex was wild and provocative when it arrived on scene. At this point, I'm left to wonder if very nearly every sex scene needs to incorporate it, and often as the most significant thing going on. And when did 'spitting' become erotic? I must have missed that development completely.

I do fully respect what this movie attempted to do, and most of my vote score is actually for the pretense and ambition. Unfortunately, the 'effect' marks are much lower.

Spoilers herein.

Yes, this is porn, with some real negatives. One of these is its perversion, pretty much all the pain, bondage and fetish you can imagine.

But it is done as a parody. The watcher is being goofed on, tortured for fun. In fact, this is intelligent writing, and may be the only movie which you'll fast forward past the sex scenes to see the real movie.

The setup is a real fashion show of the ordinary variety. It is interrupted by gangsta cows in latex. This, it turns out is a DVD created by the very same gangsta cows.

So right away we have several folded layers:

• an erotic show (this movie) that's been hijacked by deliberately demeaning porn, featuring

• a similar women's fashion show similarly hijacked, within

-two DVD's showing the fetish fashions that are hijacked by the editor, Jesse, who places fetish fantasies that are as far out from those of the gangstas as their prancing is from the world of straight porn (which itself has exactly the same distance from real life).

And the thing is well acted and photographed on film with high production values. If you can stand it and transcend the material, this version of 'Clockwork Orange' will punish you for watching. Its all about the style.

The style that turns out to matter is the 'chameleon' line of clothes that start one way and shift levels.

Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

Warning to viewers - this movie is extremely rough and should only be viewed by the most jaded adult fan. A lot of money was obviously spent on this movie but that doesn't make it a great film. Good audio and video, but this will only appeal to the S&M crowd. This movie is also extremely long and would be very difficult to view in one sitting. The actors and actresses are attractive and seem to be enjoying what they are participating in. The acting is pretty good for an adult film but is still well below mainstream. Maybe the sound of Rocco saying "nasty, nasty" will do it for some viewers but not me. Maybe I just wasn't in the right frame of mind when I watched this one, though, because everybody seems to be praising this movie.

John Stagliano wrote some very fine roles for his leading ladies but then sabotaged their performances by emphasizing interminable gonzo sex scenes. Result was an influential hit with porn audiences but a missed opportunity.

Shooting in 35mm, the Evil Angel release shapes up as a real feature film, except for its giving over so much of its 4-1/2 hour running time to XXX gross-outs. I wish to focus on the actresses in this review, as they certainly deserve praise.

Taylor St. Claire is nearly perfect as the fetish costume designer out to partner with mainstream fashion icon Antonio (played by Rocco Siffredi) and take advantage of him. She has a pair of lesbian lovers who she extremely dominates: Friday as her blonde employee and uninhibited sex slave, plus her idea lady and editor of promo videos Belladonna, who has the movie's lead role.

While Taylor and Friday excel at developing full-bodied characters, Belladonna gives a flat, rather uninteresting acting performace in what should have been the story's centerpiece. She plays the mousey, submissive underling who finally asserts herself -somebody the audience can root for. But in Stagliano's fetishistic (his fetish is not the movie's BDSM theme but rather ass-worship, as he has demonstrated in hundreds of videos under his aegis as "Buttman") universe we are supposed to root instead for Belladonna to constantly out-do herself in sideshow freak antics, the movie's selling point. Whether enjoying extreme anal penetration or having her nipples stretched (along with other body parts) to a scary degree, she is mistreated in the cause of impressing a jaded audience, which has only become more jaded and gonzo-oriented in the two decades since this influential movie was made. The sex in "The Fashionistas" is not erotic, but rather merely "spectacular" -something to gaze at in wonder

Alongside the other leading ladies, the best performance is given by fetish model extraordinaire Caroline Pierce as Rocco's ex, a buyer for a leading department store chain who more than holds her own in verbal sparring with him, and in later reels suddenly turns into an improbable sexual dynamo when dallying in the VIP back room of a BDSM sex club with Rocco's assistant Manuel Ferrera. Other femmes have juicy sex turns without being accorded dialog or characterization, notably Monique deep-throating par excellence in the VIP room and stunning fetish icon Star Chandler as the dominatrix who puts Belladonna through her paces.

Though the budget listed in IMDb for the movie is not credible (half a million dollars) the production is certainly lavish by Adult Cinema standards, and the cinematography credited to Don Crane (though the clapperboards list him as "F. Long") impressive.