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 Studio: Hysterie Prod/Fatale Productions
Director: Emilie Jouvet
First off, that is not Michelle Aston on the cover.
Portions of this review originally appeared on Fleshbot
Ah, Paris. If for no other reason than to begin a review with "Ah, Paris" did I watch this for lesbians/by lesbians movie, shot in dingy clubs with a spotlight and shot with sweaty abandon in apartments and elevators around the City of Light.
Really a series of vignettes featuring some of the same people on one steamy night in Gay Paree, "One Night Stand" (Pour Une Nuit) was made in 2006 and just made its way via festivals and US distributor Fatale Media to my hands. Along the way it won "First Prize of the Lesbian Jury" at Berlin's inaugural porn film festival.
Femmes fatales outnumber lipstick lesbians in this movie featuring strap-on action and andro girls (who look like a Smiths-era Morrissey and made this writer confused) as well as, according to the cover, "real orgasms." I can never tell. Me, I take what I can get and appreciate any extra effort.
But in terms of a travelogue, the excellent soundtrack and appealing, occasional outside filming make Paris look like it is crawling with predatory lesbians (with not one shot of the phallic Eiffel Tower in sight.)
 Labels: fatale media, lesbian, paris
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 Studio: Blowfish Video
Director: Shine Louise Houston
Cast: Shawn, Jiz, Micha, Dallas, Vai, Legs, Johnny, Jake, Wilder, Michelle Aston, Julie
Portions of this review originally appeared on Fleshbot
A woman invites a friend into her apartment. "I got you a present," she says, leading her friend into a room where a naked woman sits waiting on the bed.
"Nice present," she says, and the three become equally naked and start going at it.
Gay or straight, the question remains: If I got you a present, like, say, a bottle of Jagermeister, wouldn't it be polite to wait for you to offer before I started drinking it? If your answer is no, well, I want to be a lesbian.
"Such a good boy," the friend says to the "present," slapping her repeatedly. The first woman casually dons a strap-on and goes to work.
FThe latest in a series about a well-furnished apartment being used as a sex den by a group of Bay Area lesbians, "The Crash Pad"'s narrative is at first confusing because it is framed as a movie being watched on a computer by its editor. We watch as people come and go, trysting and remembering their hookups from the night before. At some earlier point, we assume, these women had names and back stories; now, all we know about them is that a key to the Crash Pad is a coveted thing.
Coveted but not because the Crash Pad is a lesbian utopia. The femmes sneer at the drag kings, territories seem fragile. And then Michelle Aston shows up! What is she doing here?? Aston again does not take this opportunity to be a delicate flower; she treats her partnwer most harshly.
"Where do you think you're going, Little Girl?" Aston barks. The little girl gasps as the tattooed storm cloud of Aston descends on her.
"Crashpad" is clearly a movie made by lesbians who love lesbians, and the passion is catchy. Sometimes the filmmakers get so excited that we can even hear them whispering and we can see their cameras. All in service of getting us as close as possible to their subjects, which can't be bad.
It remains unclear at the end what that peeping movie editor is doing there, but one thing is certain: if the Abby Winters girls showed up at the Crash Pad, they wouldn't stand a chance.
Labels: blowfish, lesbian, michelle aston
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 Studio: Viv Thomas
Director: Viv Thomas, Lewis Thomas
Cast: Ella, Jo, Eve Angel, Jamie, Vera, Sandra Shine, Lolita, Lisa, Delores, Anoushka, Peaches, Sandy, Henrietta, Sophie Moone, Gina B.
Portions of this review originally appeared on Fleshbot
When I was a freshman in high school, our history teacher was passing out examination books. About halfway through his pile, the colors changed from blue to pink. A kid named Dennis said, "Mr. (X), I don't want a pink one," to which Mr. (X) replied, "Dennis, some day you'll find that you want a pink one all the time."
I had no idea what this meant, but knew it had to be dirty. I was not surprised to find out that Mr. (X) got fired the next year from a school system where no one ever got fired, even the teachers who still hit us.
Still, he was right.
That is what I think of when I see the word "Pink", and I wonder if my freshman history teacher would appreciate this three-disc-plus-one compendium of Portugal-based Viv Thomas' Sapphic adventures.
Disc One, "The Innocence of Lesbian Love", concerns Jo, an impressionable student boarding in a Budapest rooming house. She is greeted icily by the housemistress' daughter, Ella. Her mother apologizes. "I'm sorry. That was my daughter."
Not knowing a lot of the players makes watching this collection intriguing. We know we are not watching the European version of a Pink Visual video; everyone is toned and feminine. In fact, there are no men whatsoever in these four videos.
The performers speak English about as well as most of their Porn Valley counterparts, and it is fun to watch porn that was made in places other than the 20 or so overexposed Porn Valley rental McMansions.
It turns out that there is nothing innocent about this boarding house. Both mother and daughter are on the make from Day One. If the daughter isn't exhorting newcomers to brush her hair (wink), mom is insisting on drawing hot baths for her guests, looking over her shoulder tartily all the while.
The housemother really is a predatrix. Under the auspices of conducting a medical examination of a student who thinks she might have contracted "diseases" from a boyfriend, Mom bags another one. The movie doesn't really go anywhere, but who cares? It achieves what I wanted "Suspiria" to accomplish, but with no blood. And in terms of vivid portraits of inappropriate authority figures, it was just like being back in high school.
Thinking of booking passage to Hungary? Don't bother. "We don't like boys," Mom says.
Disc Two contains "The Loss of Innocence". Now Jo is living in Portugal and Katie, one of the boarders from Disc One, comes to visit. Beyond that it is difficult to tell who-all means what to whom, although there is a hot mom (Anoushka) who resembles Anjelica Huston's "Grifters" character in her Monte Carlo period.
"Ella!" Anoushka cries (Ella is there for some reason). "You're my daughter's friend!"
"Step-daughter," says the kittenish Ella.
Taken by itself, the first disc has just enough plot to sustain a porn movie. It seems odd producers felt the need to revisit these characters, as if consumers were clamoring to find out what happened to Jo. Her and Katie's characters could have been renamed and the movie would have seemed more coherent. Most porn movies collapse under the weight of their own plot; a sequel's worth of plot is ridiculous (I can't wait to see Pirates 2).
But the sex is great. Anoushka is a tasty vamp, and Ella seems to be the ingenue fatale in this one.
Disc Three features "A Lesbian Odyssey". Mom - the boardinghouse mistress - from Disc One now runs an inn with Ella. It's Like "The Gilmore Girls" but less frustrating. People come and go. A redhead appears. Jo doesn't. Maybe there were contract issues and she wanted a producer's credit and script approval, like Vin Diesel.
In that "Lesbian Odyssey" doesn't seem like a sequel, and in that the performers speak Magyar with English subtitles, it is a more effective movie.
But the fourth disc ties it all togeher like Jeff Lebowski's rug. There are prequels and interstitials that rewarded the 45 minutes of fast forwarding I did with the previous three discs, documenting Ella's first Hungarian love as well as a wonderful kissing scene and a lot of unedited footage.
This series has no truck-driving lesbians, no living-in-a-cabin lesbians, no state-worker-on-disability lesbians, no Janet Reno lesbians, not even any Ally Sheedy or Jennifer Beals lesbians. But I guess that is like requiring Madeleine Albright straight girls in my heterosexual porn.
Labels: lesbian, reviews, viv thomas
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Studio: Hysterie Prod/Fatale Productions
