From: (CH)
Newsgroups: alt.sex.movies
Subject: REVIEW: Femme's "revelations"
Date: 31 Jul 1995 07:10:09 GMT
Lines: 265
Howdy, all.
First, a tech question -- suggestions for moving between DOS and the bjove
editor for UNIX? As you can see, I'm getting some extraneous characters.
Anyway...
I've just finished watching a video that I'm sure not many
a.s.m.'ers have seen -- one of the Femme Productions, a 1992 film
called "Revelations." It's such a different genre of porn that
it almost shouldn't be discussed in the same newsgroup as Seymore
and Shane's "Backdoor to Buttsville," which I watched a couple of
weeks ago. It certainly can't be reviewed in the same sort of
terms and format.
Nonetheless, it ought to be reviewed, simply because it IS part
of the galaxy of porn, and because it probably would appeal to
some tastes (though it's far too simple to call it "women's
porn," as though all women would like it and all men would think
it tame). I find something to enjoy in almost ANY porn ;-) and
I'd heard enough about Femme and Candida Royale to raise my
curiosity.
So, on to the review.
REVELATIONS
1992, Femme Productions
Dir. -- Candida Royale
Writer -- ditto
Cast:
Ariel -- Amy Rapp
Zane -- Colin Matthews
"Lovers" -- Nicole and Martin London
"Two Women" -- Ava Grace and Paris Phillips
We open with a close-up of Ariel's face as she spends the first
minute or so enjoying an orgasm. When she recovers, she speaks
to us, telling us why she's in prison. As she tells us her
story, we cut to a flashback of her pre-prison life.
The New Order has just finished the first 500 days of their
reign, and the last few resisters are being flushed out of hiding
and arrested. There's a nice evocation of the gray, drab
brutality and starkness, a sort of urban dystopia meets East
Germany. Everyone wears the same baggy gray jumpsuits, and the
menacing New Order emblem adorns all of the material of daily
life.
Ariel sees three stormtroopers taking Mr. Simpson away, and
doesn't understand why. But she realizes that his apartment will
be open since they broke down the doors, so she sneaks in --
partly to loot (because everyone's poor) but partly to find out
what kind of person would be arrested. As she rummages thru the
shelves, she discovers a secret door leading to a room filled
with images and videos, some simple nudes and some actively
engaged in sex. Ariel's never seen or even imagined such things,
and starts a video.
I should note that this film is in fact shot on film, except for
the three videos that Ariel watches, which are clearly shot on
video -- an effective touch that communicates the distance
between her life and the life she encounters within the videos.
Ariel's occasional voice-overs during the videos convey her
feelings at discovering this new world.
The first video begins with the caption "The beginning... where
every touch is full of wonder." It features the Londons as "the
lovers," who do a nice job portraying two people exploring one
another for the first time. Nicole and Martin are both in their
early 30s: she (like all of the women here) is pleasantly
natural, small-breasted, with real skin texture (unlike the
perfect "glazed" porn starlet in body make-up). Her red-blonde
hair is tied back in a simple ponytail, and her nails are short
and uncolored. He's trim, not a gym rat but low-fat, somewhere
between Peter North and Rocco Sifredi, with short dark hair and a
tattoo on both biceps. They're both simply nude, no fancy
lingeree or high heels.
After three minutes of kissing and caressing, he eats her trimmed
pussy, but there's no pussy visible, just his face buried in her
crotch. I think SHE'S happy, though... Not long after, we get a
little less than a minute of Nicole engaging in very slow,
luxurious fellatio, long licks alternating with taking him about
two-thirds down. He's not huge, but a nice shape, strongly
curved upward. I was wishing I were him during this, so I'll bet
HE was happy as well...;-)
The whole scene was about ten minutes long, and no fucking was
shown or really implied. Sort of an intense make-out session.
Ariel is astounded -- sex in the New Order is only for
procreation. We cut back to her stark apartment as she checks on
her fertility, as required by the state. "They taught us that
sex was just for procreation, that it was dirty." Here's my
first qualm about the writing -- this is just too much
socialization for a regime that's only been in power for a year
and a half.
Anyway, we meet Ariel's husband Zane, who wants very badly to
"create a little soldier" to compensate for his having been
dishonorably discharged (it turns out he'd been caught with
"illegal material," which we later discover to have been a skin
mag). He wears his uniform beret at all times, including during
sex with Ariel. He makes her douche before sex (we don't see
this, of course, but she's sitting on the edge of the tub with
the bag hanging from the shower curtain rod). A very brief scene
between Ariel and Zane, in which he clearly is only interested in
impregnation. "Go lie on your bed. Rear-entry position." His
idea of talking dirty is saying "Take my little soldier." Ariel
sees the video in her head, and is distraught at the contrast
between the tenderness of the lovers and Zane's callousness. The
whole scene is played out in less than a minute, and is as poorly
simulated as the sex in a daytime soap.
She returns to the secret room and sees a second video: "The
dance... passion in full bloom." This again features the
Londons, but this time they're both dressed in clingy black
evening wear, and are clearly out to tease one another. The
first six minutes are kissing, caressing, fondling, gradually
losing clothes along the way. She takes a minute to give his
cock a delicious chewing and licking through the fabric of his
pants. He lays her down on a glass table, strips off one of her
stockings and ties her hands together over her head, a nice touch
that's completely lost for the rest of the scene. It just
disappears.
In fact, that's the main problem with this scene -- there are
severe discontinuity problems. Just when they start to do one
thing, they're suddenly doing another. He's fucking her from
behind...they're standing face-to-face and feeling each other
up...he's eating her while she lays on the table...she's rubbing
herself (with his hand helping, so that her entire mound is
hidden, dammit). They're more vigorous in this scene than in the
first, as befits their greater experience with one another, and
their wedding rings are in prominent and frequent view. But
nothing anywhere approaching penetration is shown. I trust that
they are fucking, though, because again they both appear to be
having a pleasant time. (Yeah, I know, it's a movie, but if
they're acting, they're a lot more convincing than the screamers
and groaners we typically see and hear in more conventional
porn.)
Anyway, seeing Nicole finger herself gives Ariel the idea, and
the next couple of minutes sees Ariel masturbating at home in the
tub. We only see her from the waist up, though, only in profile,
and it only goes on for thirty seconds or so. My major complaint
with the film, in fact, is that Ariel/Amy Rapp -- a very pretty
woman -- is so little used.
When next she's in bed with Zane, she fantasizes about the video
lovers, and her hand creeps down to bring herself off. Zane is
so disgusted with this perverted act that he leaves her bed
before finishing, and goes back to his own cot. In fact, he's SO
put off by this that he won't touch Ariel for her next three
fertile periods. She's worried about this, because if a married
couple doesn't conceive within the first year, hubby can trade
the wife in for a new one. Finally, in an attempt to get Zane to
have sex again, she tries to seduce him by lying provocatively
across the couch when he returns home from work. When he
resists, the truth comes out -- that he was discharged for having
possessed a girlie magazine. He blows up -- "I made a solemn vow
that I would never weaken like that again -- and now here you are
acting like this. This is the type of thing that leads to
immorality, the breaking down of the moral code that holds us all
together, that creates order." He's completely indoctrinated.
We also learn that Zane has gotten a security report about
Ariel's visits to the secret room, and threatens to go there
himself to see what she's been doing. Ariel rushes to get there
ahead of him and destroy the evidence. But there's one last
video... "the thought that I could never see this tape...those
images...again." She pops the last one in:
"Two women... sharing the forbidden."
And indeed, it IS two women, both wearing the gray jumpsuits of
the Order. But they lock the door behind them, strip down, and
put on some hidden contraband lingeree, also spending a couple of
minutes applying some contraband makeup on one another as well.
(A nice touch -- the standard-issue underwear that they shed is
coarse linen BOXERS and bra!! Sort of what you'd imagine that
Shaker underwear might have been like... ;-) )
This is a long and tender g/g scene between real-life lovers (as
the credits at the end of the film tell us), and again both women
are nicely human: small-breasted, birthmarks, one woman rounded
and soft and the other skinny and sporting VERY long and erect
nipples. The first ten minutes of this scene is gentle, fondling
and breast play, and only hesitantly breaks to some pussy-tasting
toward the end. (We get our first, last, and only five seconds
of identifiable labia here -- quite by accident -- as the scene
is shot from almost straight overhead and the thin woman's
engorged pussy lips are only just visible.) The thin woman
reciprocates in the most tragically wasted shot in the movie, in
which she eats her lover doggie style but the whole event is
filmed from the front! Lovely facial expressions -- again I have
no trouble believing that they're both in love and in lust -- but
what a loss, to not have that lovely ass and pussy showed off for
even a moment.
Just as the two women are sated, the stormtroopers burst into
their room and the tape goes dead. And in real life, other
stormtroopers burst in on Ariel and carry her away to prison,
where we end with some narration. The film ends with her
recalling scenes from the videos, superimposed by the barbed-wire
and razor-coil of her prison walls, a very nice graphic touch.
The American flag flies over the prison tower...
The allegory of repression is ruined by a last panel of text that
blatantly tells us the message we got from the film itself:
"Growing forces of intolerance are attacking our public and
private freedom of expression. Those of us who value our
inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness
have a duty to defend it. There are no masters without willing
slaves."
Let me finish with some pros and cons of this film as compared
with our more normal topics of discussion here.
Pro: Candida uses very real-looking actors with identifiably
human breasts. They're physically attractive people without
being the Perfect Porn Mannequins that are altogether too common
nowadays. If Annette Haven were working today, she'd be working
for Femme.
Pro: The actors appear to really be enjoying their sex. Visible
signs of enjoyment like flaring nostrils, straining neck tendons,
and other subtle clues are a lot more fun and convincing for me
that thrashing and screaming.
Pro: There is a fair level of acting, and an attempt at writing a
viable story. The script won't be excerpted in the New Yorker,
but it ain't bad.
Pro: The video format intertwined with the film was nice, and
lent an air of watching your horny but normal next-door neighbors
through their accidentally open window. (At least, Jeanne Fine
and TTBoy don't live next door to ME ;-)
(and one great big) Con: Apparently, "women's erotica" has no
female genitalia in it. Maybe I'm just trapped by the
conventions of our genre, but I wanted to see some pussy during
all this play. Aside from maybe 90 seconds worth of visible cock
sucking and the aforementioned glimpse of labia, this could have
been part of the Emanuelle series. There's nothing inherently
"dirty" about showing a cock slipping in and out, or about a
tongue and fingers at play with a pussy. I shouldn't have to
explain this to a porn maker... but Candide's vision doesn't
include this degree of explicitness. Her intended audience must
be pretty early in the porn learning curve.
Think of this movie as the Harlequin Desire of porn. It would be
silly to even attempt an Imperial (tm) rating, because we'd be
speaking an entirely different language. I'm not going to lament
my $3.22, and I might rent another Femme video if it happened to
be on the shelf some week, but I still enjoy other stuff from
Andrew Blake to John Leslie to Bruce Seven. Femme is just
another flavor in the tasty smorgasbord of porn.
169 “I can arrange all that.” Such Apaches as had not gone back on the war-path returned to the States with the troops; but there were five months more of the outrages of Geronimo and his kind. Then in the summer of the year another man, more fortunate and better fitted to deal with it all, perhaps,—with the tangle of lies and deceptions, cross purposes and trickery,—succeeded where Crook had failed and had been relieved of a task that was beyond him. Geronimo was captured, and was hurried off to a Florida prison with his band, as far as they well could be from the reservation they had refused to accept. And with them were sent other Indians, who had been the friends and helpers of the government for years, and who had run great risks to help or to obtain peace. But the memory and gratitude of governments is become a proverb. The southwest settled down to enjoy its safety. The troops rested upon the laurels they had won, the superseded general went on with his work in another field far away to the north. The new general, the saviour of the land, was heaped[Pg 305] with honor and praise, and the path of civilization was laid clear. Parliament met on the 10th of January, 1765. The resentment of the Americans had reached the ears of the Ministry and the king, yet both continued determined to proceed. In the interviews which Franklin and the other agents had with the Ministers, Grenville begged them to point to any other tax that would be more agreeable to the colonists than the stamp-duty; but they without any real legal grounds drew the line between levying custom and imposing an inland tax. Grenville paid no attention to these representations. Fifty-five resolutions, prepared by a committee of ways and means, were laid by him on the table of the House of Commons at an early day of the Session, imposing on America nearly the same stamp-duties as were already in practical operation in England. These resolutions being adopted, were embodied in a bill; and when it was introduced to the House, it was received with an apathy which betrayed on all hands the profoundest ignorance of its importance. Burke, who was a spectator of the debates in both Houses, in a speech some years afterwards, stated that he never heard a more languid debate than that in the Commons. Only two or three persons spoke against the measure and that with great composure. There was but one division in the whole progress of the Bill, and the minority did not reach to more than thirty-nine or forty. In the Lords, he said, there was, to the best of his recollection, neither division nor debate! His cheek paled for an instant as the thought obtruded that the man might resist and he have to really shoot him. "Good, the old man's goin' to take the grub out to 'em himself," thought the Deacon with relief. "He'll be easy to manage. No need o' shootin' him." "Them that we shot?" said Shorty carelessly, feeling around for his tobacco to refill his pipe. "Nothin'. I guess we've done enough for 'em already." John Dodd, twenty-seven years old, master, part of the third generation, arranged his chair carefully so that it faced the door of the Commons Room, letting the light from the great window illumine the back of his head. He clasped his hands in his lap in a single, nervous gesture, never noticing that the light gave him a faint saintlike halo about his feathery hair. His companion took another chair, set it at right angles to Dodd's and gave it long and thoughtful consideration, as if the act of sitting down were something new and untried. "Besides," Norma said desperately, "they're only rumors—" "Oh, I've found a way of gitting shut of them rootses—thought of it while I wur working at the trees. I'm going to blast 'em out." During the next ten years the farm went forward by strides. Reuben bought seven more acres of Boarzell in '59, and fourteen in '60. He also bought a horse-rake, and threshed by machinery. He was now a topic in every public-house from Northiam to Rye. His success and the scant trouble he took to conciliate those about him had made him disliked. Unprosperous farmers[Pg 124] spoke windily of "spoiling his liddle game." Ditch and Ginner even suggested to Vennal that they should club together and buy thirty acres or so of the Moor themselves, just to spite him. However, money was too precious to throw away even on such an object, especially as everyone felt sure that Backfield would sooner or later "bust himself" in his dealings with Boarzell. "Let's go home," she said faintly—"it's getting late."