The only thing notable about this navel-gazing documentary detailing the life of a French "erotic" film actress was its acceptance into the mainstream New York Film Festival. While scandalous in its day, the film is an exercise in tedium, with occasional explicit sex to wake a snoozing audience. Claudine Beccarie is a thirty-year old porn actress. She handles all of her own job offers and representation, so Davy captures her on phone calls lining up work and trying to get paid for past performances. The hardcore sexual scenes in the film are not from any of her previous films, however. Davy sets up Beccarie and some of her co-stars to have sex on cue, and then talks to them about the psychology of what they are doing. We get to have an obligatorily uncomfortable interview with Beccarie and her mother, both of whom remember Claudine's upbringing a little differently, and Beccarie's fiance, who is ten years her junior.
Davy is more fascinated with Claudine than the viewer is. Most of the female actresses have overly-plucked eyebrows, so they wear an expression of mild surprise during the screen time. Beccarie is an attractive woman who could have had a career in mainstream films if she had chosen that route. Instead, she seems to be working on her inner demons through pornographic film making, touting her individualism and freedom. The mid-70's decor and fashion are hilarious. Davy spends a lot of time onscreen himself, in scenes that seem planned and artificial. Claudine's story of living in a brothel after leaving home as a teenager sounds like the plot to a soap opera she had watched pre-interview. One scene with her and an attractive young man is cringe-worthy because the man either doesn't speak French and cannot respond to Claudine's questions and direction, or he might be mentally deficient. It's odd that we watch Claudine and her friends in all their naked glory, copulate on camera, get an interview with the people in her life, yet the one subject she refuses to discuss is her politics.
Sitting through the two weird epilogues, and a cursory online check, shows this entire two-hour exercise, which took me days to watch, is moot. For all of Beccarie's condescension about the porn film business- what she does is erotica, not porn- and her slamming of that new American hit "Deep Throat," she ended up leaving the hardcore sexual film industry a year or two after this was made. Davy would go on to make other "Exhibition" films, focusing on a different subject, but if they are anything like this, I don't want to spend another two hours or so having to listen to the drivel, unless it's coming from an actress named Beatrice Harnois who pops up way too late in this film, and is unbelievably, sadly beautiful. Her initial scene is a yawn-fest as one actress reads some erotica she wrote (yeah, right) while the cast members badly act it out. This one star's story gets two stars from me.
Davy is more fascinated with Claudine than the viewer is. Most of the female actresses have overly-plucked eyebrows, so they wear an expression of mild surprise during the screen time. Beccarie is an attractive woman who could have had a career in mainstream films if she had chosen that route. Instead, she seems to be working on her inner demons through pornographic film making, touting her individualism and freedom. The mid-70's decor and fashion are hilarious. Davy spends a lot of time onscreen himself, in scenes that seem planned and artificial. Claudine's story of living in a brothel after leaving home as a teenager sounds like the plot to a soap opera she had watched pre-interview. One scene with her and an attractive young man is cringe-worthy because the man either doesn't speak French and cannot respond to Claudine's questions and direction, or he might be mentally deficient. It's odd that we watch Claudine and her friends in all their naked glory, copulate on camera, get an interview with the people in her life, yet the one subject she refuses to discuss is her politics.
Sitting through the two weird epilogues, and a cursory online check, shows this entire two-hour exercise, which took me days to watch, is moot. For all of Beccarie's condescension about the porn film business- what she does is erotica, not porn- and her slamming of that new American hit "Deep Throat," she ended up leaving the hardcore sexual film industry a year or two after this was made. Davy would go on to make other "Exhibition" films, focusing on a different subject, but if they are anything like this, I don't want to spend another two hours or so having to listen to the drivel, unless it's coming from an actress named Beatrice Harnois who pops up way too late in this film, and is unbelievably, sadly beautiful. Her initial scene is a yawn-fest as one actress reads some erotica she wrote (yeah, right) while the cast members badly act it out. This one star's story gets two stars from me.