Femme

This vignette feature marked the breakthrough of Adult Cinema actress Candida Royalle into a behind-the-camera career, collaborating at first with like-minded director Lauren Niemi, and launching her own production/distibution banner Femme Productions. The rest is history.

For their first effort the dynamic duo elected to adopt a music-video inspired style, as both were dissatisfied with what passed for explicit screen erotica in an Adult Entertainment industry controlled by and geared exclusively toward men.

So besides dispensing with the mandatory (and rather ridiculous due to constant repetition) money shot, they also 86-ed corny dialog, soap operatics and attempts by sex worker performers at acting.

Lacking the budgets that had made David Hamilton (in soft-core mode) and several years later Andrew Blake the maestros of sensual feminine sex on screen, Royalle & Niemi's approach doesn't hold up very well 30-plus years later, though they did issue via Adam & Eve DVD a 20th anniversary edition of this feature, including an informative interview documentary on the history of the company. Royalle parted ways with Niemi a couple of years after this was shot, and went on to direct a series of influential movies on her own, true to her creative notions of what Adult Erotica could be freed of its antiquated porno shackles.

The six short videos here have plenty of music, but do not rely on the hectic editing and lack of subtlety that one associates with MTV and VH1 product. Familiar sex stars of the '80s were cast, notably Rhonda Jo Petty in both boy/girl and girl/girl scenes, and the performers do not "open out" to the camera as in most recent Adult shows, the notable exception being filmmaker Nica Noelle who has followed in Royalle's footsteps in asserting a more naturalistic approach to erotic scenes.

So I give Royalle, who I had the pleasure of meeting and chatting with back in 1988 at a press screening of Demi Moore's guilty pleasure horror film "The Seventh Sign" (how random is that?), E for Effort in this first offering, just a hint of great things to come. We miss her greatly.

Candida Royalle got behind the camera for her Femme productions in which she intended to make porn films more suited to women and couples. In this, her first film, she did away with a lot of the hard porn shots such as extreme close-ups of penetrations and the so-called "money shots". Instead she concentrated more on the erotic side such as seduction and romantic interaction between the cast. In this film, there are six vignettes showing couples and even a threesome. There is almost no dialogue.

The six vignettes are: Rock Erotica, in which a rock fan meets her idol in a dark stairwell; TV Idol, in which a fan meets her idol - or maybe she doesn't; Gallery, in which two men and a woman in an art gallery let their imaginations take over; Photo Session, which takes place in a photographer's studio; Sales Pitch, which has a saleswoman giving more than makeup advice to her female customer; and finally, The Dressing Room, another scene in which imagination plays a large part.

Many of the cast are experienced hands at porn but the best actress here has to be Carol Cross who is completely natural and who is surely one of the cutest porn actresses ever. It is a pity that in the Gallery scene we do not see her cute features often enough. The music composed for this film more than compensates for the lack of dialogue without being too intrusive. With this film, we get to see Miss Royalle's vision of adult entertainment and it is certainly entertaining.