Rocco

Pornstar Rocco Siffredi retires from porn and looks back on his career and why he quit.

Not sure what I was expecting out of this and watched out of curiosity more than anything else. Mostly, I figured it might be interesting to see what motivates people to do porn, and keep doing it, and then, looking back, what they think of the whole experience.

This documentary doesn't really shed a light on this. It tries to, but there are no profound take-aways. The reasons for quitting seem kind of phony, as if Rocco Siffredi is trying to get us to sympathise with him for being a pornstar. The introspectives just seem staged for the camera, with him saying what he thinks we want to hear.

This makes the whole thing seem quite self-indulgent, like him saying "Look at me, look at what a sensitive guy I am".

Woven through the whole thing are behind-the-scenes clips from the making of some of his movies. This jars with his "Porn is bad, I'm a family man" vibe. I guess that was the idea but the way these scenes make them gratuitous, rather than a demonstration of why he is turning his back on the industry.

Quite pointless in the end. The only thing I learned is that Rocco's cameraman is a dufus...

It is interesting enough to watch it. But after about an hour it becomes painfully obvious what the documentary is trying to show. Have they fired the first producer and brought in a second one to to wrap it up from the existing footage?

Rocco is a bare boned (sorry!) doc on porn superstar Rocco Siffredi who has reached the end of his career. Ultimately an uneven tale is told focusing on the last shoots he orchestrates w/his cameraman cousin who deserves a doc of his own. Herein lies the problem w/this story, how did Rocco get into this business? He mentions his obsession w/women & his mother's disappointment but how did this Neopolitan neophyte find his calling? A more rounded examination from Nick Broomfield or Errol Morris might've succeeded but as it stands, all the sex & foreplay is merely titillating w/nothing substantive gained in the end (sorry again!).

An excuse to show porn as a documentary and it wasn't even very interesting. I forward wound after the first five minutes to see if it got better and the answer was no!

"Rocco" opens with porn actor Rocco Siffredi talking about a "devil between his legs," his dark side that is permanently threatening to destroy his life. It's too bad that the filmmakers never make any effort to expose this devil and instead seem give their subject complete control over their project. The result is definitely interesting, and sporadically very funny, but unfortunately shies away from Rocco's darkest fears and the low-points of his life.

For those unaware, Rocco is a porn actor known for very rough scenes, though apparently (judging from this movie, at least) the work atmosphere on his sets is quite friendly and supportive of the women he works with. You could obviously question if the team is always this nice to the actresses, even when they are not being filmed by outsiders or the women decide in the last minute they don't want to do the really hard stuff, and since the directors rarely interview the porn stars without Rocco present, that element of the film doesn't hold up to much scrutiny. We just have to believe the movie that Rocco is always a nice guy to every girl he has sex in front of a camera with, and your willingness to sympathize with the main character in his more emotional scenes will likely depend on wether you go along with that or not.

Speaking of emotional scenes, there are a couple in which Siffredi talks about his family life growing up, or his family life now, and in these moments he seems honest and open about his feelings. However, once more the film suffers from a lack of outside perspective from people who might give a more critical account of our star's private behaviour. The scenes with his sons in particular are awkward to watch, and you can clearly see how uncomfortable they are with being filmed while their dad talks to them about porn.

Most of the movie is centered around Rocco with very few outsiders commenting on the man or his work. One is his wife, though we only get a few lines from her about how great a guy her husband is. Another is his cousin and co-worker Gabby, though he serves more as comedic relief (the disappointed look on his face after Siffredi simplifies a set piece he thought of is hilarious and sad at the same time) than he does provide a different viewpoint on the hardcore scenes he films. The only person who manages to take the spotlight away from Rocco and affect the way we see him is fellow porn actress Kelly Stafford, who stole the movie for me. Not only does she offer a female opinion on porn of Rocco's caliber, her friendship with the man, which ostensibly goes much deeper than a mere business relationship, is also very believable and heartwarming.

Overall, if you're interested in how porn scenes are filmed, this film might be of interest to you. Just don't expect it to be very critical of its subject.