Worthy of classic status, Candida Royalle's "My Surrender" holds up extremely well over 20 years later, proof positive that Adult Cinema was capable of serious, quality work once upon a time. Unfortunately, Candida's high standards have gone by the wayside in the years that followed, and we're unlikely to see a rebirth of this type of material.
Shot after Candida took a four-year hiatus from the porn wars, the feature has Fine in a role similar to (but with significant differences, pointed out on the auteur's commentary track) to real-life Royalle: she's an Adult filmmaker, seen looking at VHS tapes in her editing room (shot at an actual VCA Pictures editing facility).
Show's theme is that uptight Fine needs to surrender to love: she's been burned before and has closed out any future romances and entanglements. This is clearly not Candida's problem, who has been a risk-taker both in her personal and professional life.
The video's structure is admirably multi-layered and innovative, not in the showy, empty "look at me! I'm great!" manner of overrated mainstream folk like Cameron, Nolan and Tarantino, but in service of the story and themes. Besides juggling the several VHS screens before her, Fine's attention is frequently drawn to the CCTV display of her building's security camera at the door. There she sees and relives on old CCTV tapes a would-be lover Alex Sanders, who we see receiving Jeanna's soul kiss after taking her home from a party. She gave him the brush-off for the reasons already mentioned, but has second thoughts on what she might be missing.
Meta-structure of watching tapes leads to a functional vignette construction, whereby Jeanna watches VHS submissions mailed to her by couples who would like the erotic director to shoot professional videotapes of them acting out their fantasies. Royalle uses this high- concept premise as a springboard to mixing reality with fantasy, as we see role-playing scenes acted out for her camera, but it's not clear which she actually filmed, which are purely imaginary on her part, etc. Included among these scenes are her own erotic meanderings regarding sexually hooking up with Sanders.
Included is a "naughty schoolgirl" vignette acted out by British talent Nici Sterlihg and her real-life hubby Wilde Oscar, with the requisite spanking and other British-style content. A pre-boob job Jill Kelly (looking absolutely mah-velous) fantasizes a version of herself, as a successful Adult Film producer auditioning her beau Mark Davis, a role- reversal similar to that of Fine being the director rather than the porn talent.
More offbeat is Claudio, a fine mature porn thesp, re-enacting for Fine's camera his first meeting with his sister-in-law and future wife Gina Rome, both sporting lilting Italian accents. It is set at a funeral home where an elegant casket holds the corpse of Gina's late husband, Claudio's brother, and the scene's "forbidden fruit" aspect adds to the eroticism.
Final erotic coupling is of course Fine finally giving Alex a tumble, staged elegantly and arousingly. All the sex scenes are performed without condoms, a welcome departure from the "safe-sex" aspect of Candida's usual videos, as well as many other Romantic features from labels like Wicked and her distributor, Adam & Eve.
Fine is solid throughout, but hits one out of the park with an underplayed, mesmerizing one-take monologue about her loneliness and inability to let herself love or be loved, exquisite writing by Candida. AVN, an industry fixture I frequently lambaste for its phony awards and unearned influence over Adult Entertainment, got it right for once in giving Jeanna a Best Actress award. Note however that the same year they accorded "Bobby Sox" best film honors and Jamie Gillis as Best Actor for his lousy performance in same, so I stand by my low opinion of their entire process.
