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.