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Mar de fondo (2020)
Interesting Day at the Beach
A middle age couple goes to the beach. There they meet their friends. The men hang out drinking beer. The friend has a daughter who has a friend, Danyka who is 15 going on 25. Armando is reading Siddhartha and drinking beer when Danyka approaches. She picks up an open bottle of beer and starts drinking. Armando quickly finds out that she is 15. They then wander the beach talking about everything from the climate crisis to her party experience.
It's obvious that Armando is in a how high position when she says jump. She goes, he follows. She pats the ledge and he sits. She casually talks about parties on the beach and going "skinny" at the parties. Being middle aged his interest is peeked. Then she shows him a room on the beach where she lost her virginity. He retreats and they go their separate ways. As he is passing past her house, he sees her standing in a doorway. He stops. She takes off her top and displays her breasts. He becomes interested. Then his wife calls for him and the moment passes.
In the last 15 minutes of the movie, Danyka's intentions are revealed. He returns to the beach and finds her on the beach chair. He gives her his book after putting his phone number and email address in it. She accepts it so he has a hope of getting something going with her down the road. Just then she jumps up and runs to the ocean where she hugs and kiss a young man, her boyfriend. Armando was just an afternoon's distraction for Danyka while she awaiting her boyfriend.
This was a very interesting film with a story line that runs contra to the current narrative where the older man is always the groomer and the young girl is always the victim. It features one of Mexico's better actors. Danyka is played by a model turned actress. She does a credible joy although her talent lies as much as looking great in a bikini and looking 15 when she is actually 21 or so. Although there was a sexual tension throughout the movie, it's much better that it wasn't acted upon by either Armando or Danyka.
Le sel des larmes (2020)
A Movie About a Jerk.
Luc is a carpenter temporarily in Paris to apply to a design school. He approaches and seduces Djemila but drops her when she doesn't have sex with him. He goes back home and meets an old school crush. They have a torrid relationship until she becomes pregnant and he leaves for Paris abandoning her and his unborn child. In Paris he meets yet a third woman who he sleeps with. He makes an attempt to return to Djemila to have sex with her but she's also pregnant so that didn't work. This is a charming movie about a cad.
Kamikaze (2021)
An Annoying Orphan's Story
And yet I gave it six stars. This is Marie Reuther's first major role and she is excellent. She makes the improbable story-line if not believable at least interesting. Julie is an eighteen year old woman who is very close to her family especially her father and her brother. She opts out of a family trip to live her life but then receives a text message from her father that changes everything; their plane is crashing and she is now an orphan.
Unfortunately because of her age and wealth, she is left unsupervised able to satisfy her every whim. And she has a lot of them. Her narration of her thoughts and actions is engaging and held my interest in spite of several WTF moments.
* Hanging herself in public only to have the rope come untied and falling to the floor.
* Deciding to fly continuously on airlines hoping they would crash only to find out it would probably takes more than a couple of decades.
* Flying to South Korea to might their ski jump champion getting his private number in a couple of hours and bedding him within a day.
* Traveling to Acapulco to visit the most dangerous street in the world only to decide to go to a rap concert instead.
* Getting the world's worst tattoo.
Up until half-way through the seventh episode I was going to give this series eight stars but then the ending was revealed. Spoiler Alert! Julie has a lot of sex within a short period of time which I would not have mentioned except its a part of resolving her grief and depression. She beds the family handyman who is adult enough to realize this was a mistake and apologize to her the next morning. She beds her classmate to get him to help her with her public suicide. Then more improbably she beds the South Korean Ski Jump champion within hours of arriving in country. Finally she beds the rapper within hours of arriving in Acapulco. All of this in less than four weeks because when she finds out she is pregnant, she isn't sure which one is the father.
So what turns this review into a six star review is the recklessness of the ending. A baby won't magically repair a broken marriage and a baby won't magically resolve your grief and severe depression but yet this is what happens here. A baby adds a level of complexity to life that cannot be fully anticipated so using the pregnancy as a cure is not a good thing.
Having ranted that, I look forward to seeing Marie Reuther again soon. She is worth watching.
Charming Men: Part 1 - Julie (2020)
No Charming Men in This One.
Julie has a fight with her sister. The movie opens with her sister on a bus. She suddenly remembers she left her phone at a bus stop, gets off the bus and disappears. Julie is distraught. Three months later she gets a call on her sisters phone by a man who says he wants to return her phone. Against the advice of her lover, she meets him in the woods. He offers her a deal, show me your breasts and I'll give you the phone. She refuses then relents getting the phone. He then offers more information and the sexual demands increase. Desperate Julie complies.
There are so many holes in the plot that its a distraction. Also who is the film made for? Is it a guilty please for men to see Julie making more and more serious sexual choices? Is it supposed to be a female empowerment movie? I suppose it is if you believe "I Spit on Your Grave" is one as well.
Mia Maria Hauge Wadsworth gives a very brave performance in what has to be a passion project for her and the film-makers. She is list as make-up and additional crew as well as having the lead role which requires so much of her. This is supposed to be the first in a series of Charming Men films. The title is misleading as there is only one man in this film and he is far from charming.
Blame (2017)
A Lifetime Movie that wants to be Edgy.
American movies typically fail when they want to be edgy and transformative about the subject matter. However, except for the rare film such as Kids (1995), these movies fail to have the courage to deliver on edginess and end up merely teasing edginess.
The positive aspects of the movie. Nadia Alexander plays the ultimate mean girl. I hope her career takes off from this point. Quinn Shepherd does great as a dowdy student who gains confidence gaining some degree of agency as the movie progresses.
If the movie hadn't advertised itself as edgy I would have liked it more. It did and then it didn't deliver. With European movies becoming more explicit, American movies are becoming more PG. Quinn Shepherd wrote and directed the movie and made the decision that she would not ask her actors do to anything more telling than appearing in a bra. Understandable after all the gratuitous scenes usually involving only women. However, the movie is advertised as edgy and transformative when neither the story nor its presentation is either. The top review says that this is an amazing debut film when it is only a very competent Lifetime movie. See it but understand going in what it is and is not.
Melissa P. (2005)
A Guilty Pleasure with creepy commentary.
The great critic Roger Ebert is credited with coining the term "guilty pleasure". This is something you enjoy in spite of the fact that its not a very good movie. Its about a teenage girl's entrance into the world of sex. She does not enjoy every encounter but many viewers will. Maria Valverde was eighteen when the film was released and give a brave performance. There are four scenes which push the envelope. Early in the movie a boy she likes takes her to a secluded spot and instead of kissing her, has her kneel and perform oral sex on him. Then later he picks her up and takes her to his house where he deflowers her and then walks out. Later he brings her back for a romantic encounter only to have a friend show up. At first she storms out but when he calls her a child, she returns and to prove she grown up has sex with each in front of the other. Finally, she is blindfolded and taken to an underground chamber where she is force to kneel and service five boys with oral sex.
I recently got the DVD and discovered that there was a commentary track that had subtitles. I think it was the director and the writer, both men, with virtually no insight into their material. During the first scene instead of talking about building tension or the difficulty that a young actress would have had simulating oral sex in front of grownups, they make fun of the male actor and the pimple on his ass. During other scenes they comment on the way the male actor matured during the film. What! Then in the final sex scene, which they referred to as the "five blowjobs", they talk about how hard it was to get the equipment into a confined space. There was virtually no commentary on Maria Valverde and the challenges she faced filming difficult sex scenes in front of adults.
I would love to read an interview with Valverde now that she is an established actress in her thirties about her thoughts and experiences filming this movie.
Sex/Life (2021)
Netflix finally get sex right!
This series about a woman in mid-life dreaming about the hot sex she used to have with ripped boyfriends comparing it to her ripped husband. Sarah Shahi tackles the part of the hard partying woman with a fearless performance that communicates just who she was back in the day and who she wants to become. She is a forty-one year woman who is a ripped as she was at eighteen so she is perfect for the part. The two male actors who represent her past and current love interests are equally enthusiastic about hooking up with her. The story is fairly familiar but the execution is very satisfying.
Adieu Babylone (2001)
I Like le Besco so a minor thumbs up.
I re-watched this movie yesterday. This movie was made in 2001 but it seems the setting is years earlier. It appears to have been filmed with a camcorder. The lighting is at times unforgiving for le Besco and well as other actors. In her career, it seems she is often cast for her fearlessness as to being nude onscreen. In this movie, there is no nudity at least in the version I watched which was about ten minutes shorter that the stated length on this site. The story is romantic with le Besco's character taking up a journey that a boy she has a crush on has had to abandon. However, it seems the story loses its focus ending in Greenwich Village with people roller blading to "Love Train." However, if you like le Besco, you will be charmed by the girlish enthusiasm she brings to the role. I would love to know the backstory as to how this movie came about and how le Besco either selected it or was selected to be in it.
The Girlfriend Experience (2016)
Season Three -As Disappointing as They Come
Season One of GFE was an unexpected delight. Riley Keogh gave a brave uninhibited performance. Lodge Kerrigan and Amy Seimitz were the show runners and brought enough difference to the subject matter that the tension in the narrative benefited from it. In Season Two Kerrigan and Seimitz are each given their own story line over five episodes and it was an epic failure because each were now unrestrained in their vision and it did not work.
The series went dark for several years and a year ago it was announced that Julia Goldani Telles would star in Season Three. I watched her in The Affair playing the daughter. I thought she would bring a vulnerability to the part which would be exciting bringing something less than Keogh's assured badass approach. However, they decided that she could play an in control modern woman doing sexual research as a call girl to aid her professional career developing an AI program.
Telles performance is cringe-worthy especially in the two episode. She has a scene with a new client and does a horribly mannered attempt to look coy. Question by client, no answer, look to the right. Question by client, no answer, look down and to the right. The interaction ends with her crawling on the floor to deliver the worst simulated oral sex act I've seen in recent times. To be fair, the script does give her much to work with but we knew that from the over the top pretentious opening scene with the interviewer. As being disappointed by Season Two and waiting years for Season Three, I am leaving majorly disappointed.
Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel (2021)
If you know nothing about this mystery, this is a satisfying documentary.
I guess I'm lucky that I never heard of Chris Watts or NXIVM or Elisa Lam. It makes the documentaries about them fresh. I get the anger about some of the people in this film. However, contrary to one of the headlines, this is not a You-Tube produced documentary. Ron Howard (Apollo 13) is a co-producer. The film pursues the mystery by pursuing three lines of inquiry: the police who investigated it, the manager of the hotel where it happened and the primary You-Tubers who jumped on the mystery once the strange hotel video was posted. I would agree that the length is too long but it worked for me on a cold snowy Saturday afternoon. The primary take-away for me, besides solving the mystery, is very discretely showing how wrong the social media investigators could be because they did not have access to all the investigatory files.
MAJOR SPOILER: For instance the key evidence that led the amateur sleuths to feel it was a homicide was the statement from the police spokesman that the hatch was closed when the police arrived. Later we that it was open when the maintenance worker found the body. Both statements are like true. However none of the amateurs knew of the second one but the police did. This led to disbelief and suspicion when the police ruled it a suicide until the second statement was disclosed.
The Girlfriend Game (2015)
Surprising topic in this well done short!
If you troll certain story boards, you will find a relatively unknown genre of fiction generally known as "wife watching." The premise of these stories is that in order to spice up a relationship, a couple goes to typically a bar separately with the woman pretending to be alone. The man watches her get approached by other men. At the end of the evening they return home and hot sex ensues. What could possibly go wrong?
In this short, a man and his girlfriend play this game. The first time it ends with him intervening and taking the girlfriend away from the guy hitting on her. Of course, then the man does something stupid and his girlfriend is pissed. Later when they play the game again, she does not end it and anxiety ensues.
The film-maker does a good job of leaving so many questions unanswered. What does she really get up to? Was he really in on it? What happens after the film ends. All-in-all a very satisfying experience.
Me Chama de Bruna (2016)
A Guilty Pleasure
Roger Ebert called movies that were fun to watch but not cinematic masterpieces guilty pleasures. This series is one of those. Maria Bopp is the star and she is fearless. No teasing nudity as in much of the recent U.S. productions and most of the Latin American productions. The first two seasons are the best with the last two seasons lagging. It seems like as they went on, they took themselves more seriously and pursued numerous boring subplots. In the last season, Bopp is not nude in most of the episodes.
The story was covered in "Confessions of a Brazilian Call-girl." Bopp appears much younger than the actress in the movie which made her entry into prostitution more fraught. She leaves what is called a middle-class home and goes directly to a brothel. She almost effortlessly starts servicing any number of men and situations. There is drama at the brothel. Later after she transfers her business to her apartment, there is drama at a sex club she is trying to establish herself in. Later she gets into drugs and is in danger with the gangster she is seeing. In Season 3, she returns for a high school reunion and more drama ensues.
All in all I would recommend the first two seasons and portions of the third season.
We Are Who We Are (2020)
I don't know what I can add but this is a lot of money spent on so very little.
Apparently the Italian born director didn't come cheep and four writers were paid for this story and script. So a lot of money and talent. Then you have Fraser, who annoyed me to no end. Although he is in his middle to late teens, he giggles incessantly and seemingly has the emotional maturity of a ten year old. Its one thing for young people not to have an emotional or moral compass as they are coming to terms with life. However, for ALL the grownup in this miniseries to have a high level of dysfunction, it seems like its dysfunction for drama's sake. I know living a stable life is not dramatically interesting but this series pushes way beyond previous boundaries. I only hope that given the terrific challenges that our current military has, it's real men and women are several degrees more stable than the characters in this drama.
American Murder: The Family Next Door (2020)
1984 Is Here!
This documentary could not have been done in 2000 or maybe not even in 2015. The story is told well. It documentary has no present day interviews. It is all recorded at the time of occurrence. The film opens with the mother arriving home as captured their home security. Then it jumps to a friend trying to locate the mother. This I believe is capture at first on someone's cell phone and then on the body cam of the office who responds. There are recorded phone messages and texts. Videos of police interviews. The mother apparently posted her entire life on social media from her lupus story to her pregnancy announcement and the father's reaction. This is such an achievement in film making, its stunning. However, when you don't have any interviews to fill the backstory, the entire situation seems flat and without depth. The film gives you the barest of hints of hints as to why the father got tired of his marriage and took up with the girlfriend. However, the biggest unanswered question was why did the father not only kill his wife but his children as well. Is he another Susan Smith? His girlfriend says no. Since he plead guilty there is no expert testimony as to his mental health not that that would be definitive. That issue aside, this is both a stunning achievement and extremely unsettling how much of out life is being recorded, either by third parties or ourselves.
The View from Tall (2016)
Great Chemistry between the two leads.
This was a rare movie on many issues. First, Amanda Drinkall is superb reminding us that beauty isn't necessarily what Hollywood always says it is. Second, the chemistry between her and Michael Patrick Thorton is sincere and a joy to watch. Third, the inappropriate relationship between Justine and her teacher is more complex than the typical movie about these issues. I did not see any grooming. I did see Justine making the first move by kissing the teacher who was not the adult and did not stop it. The ending was the only sour note in the story. Why was the deep friendship between Justine and Douglas not enough? Why did they have to sleep together when their relationship was about to end because of her departure to college? And why did it occur the evening before she turned eighteen presumably after midnight so that Justine was legal?
Nocturama (2016)
A Surprising Dichotomy
After watching this movie, I turned to critics for some context. The guy writing for Roger Ebert compared it to achievements of past legendary directors. I wondered what I missed.
Apparently some people believe that this movie has a grand stylish message. It may have. However, the story needs to make internal sense for the viewer to suspend disbelief and accept the movie's inherent points.
The first part of the movie was flawless. The characters engaged in a highly co-ordinated well planned well rehearsed plan to blow up four different areas of Paris at the same time. This comes off almost perfectly. The disbelief then sets in. Instead of melting back into ordinary life to hide in plain sight, the terrorists for unknown reasons hole up in a department store. As the night goes on, it becomes more apparent that there is no leader (who planned and practiced the bombings) and no discipline resulting in the deaths of most of the terrorists.
Its a farce. One guy was supposed to tie the guards up and instead kills them. When asked why he says: "Dunno." There is one terrorist who waunders outside the store periodically to smoke a cigarette. He's blown up half of Paris but yet he's obeying the smoking laws. He encounters a young woman on a bicycle who observes that the bombings had to happen. Why? We are not told.
The one big discovery is the actress, Laure Valentnelli. She is a striking presence with this film as her only credit. Although its been five years, hopefully she will surface in another film soon.
Une fille facile (2019)
There was possibly a good film here.
This is one of those coming of age movies where a teenager gets introduced to more adult matters by an older friend or relative. In this story, sixteen year old Naima is introduced to the adult world by her 22 year old cousin. Mina Farid plays Naima and I liked her character very much. However, 28 year old Zahia Dehar is totally wrong for the older cousin. She is too old for the role and has had way too much plastic surgery including her unrealistically large and tight breasts. In these stories there is usually an older friend of similar age who is light years ahead of the protagonist in looks and experience. However, Dehar is actually pushing middle age and the director uses a soft focus on her a lot.
Naima is no lamb to the slaughter but can stand up to herself. She has the character that Sofia lacks. She gets money from her mother to pay for lunch when Sofia intends to dine and dash. She returns at the end of the film to apologize to one of the men on the yacht and to make sure he knows she is not a thief.
At the end of the movie, Sofia has decamped to Paris and Naima is training as a chef. Thirty years on when Naima is 46 you can envision her as an accomplished person but Sofia at 50 can only be envisioned as being in bad marriage. This could have been a very sweet film but the script and the casting doom it.
P-Valley (2020)
What stripping? I didn't see any stripping!
What stripping? I didn't see any stripping! After being terribly disappointed with the movie "Hustlers", I was equally disappointed with the opening episode of this miniseries. If both entertainment choices are to be believed, reasonably intelligent men with money think nothing of "Showering" $20 bills on strippers who never takeoff their clothing. In "Hustlers", none of the main characters were ever nude as far as I can recall. There were day players that did the nude scenes but not the stars. In episode one of this series, Mercedes had her last dance Fully clothed and made a boatload of money for what I would acknowledge to be some extremely impressive gymnastics that may have been done by a stunt double. Until a Series becomes real and strippers actually strip, I don't know why I would be interested in this show. I could find as interesting story lines in the average telanova.
Ultimo tango a Parigi (1972)
Has not aged well.
When this movie was released, Pauline Kaal gave it an over the top review. The mainstream thought it was too graphic. I saw it in 1972 at the McClurg Court Theater in Chicago. I was puzzled by it. It was slow and not nearly as graphic as depicted.
I re-watched it again last night. What a mess! Brando's lines are laughable. What's supposed to be witty and insightful is inane. In 1972, there was no thought as to why a young super attractive women would hook up with a man clearly past his prime and emotionally damaged. Today that is now a very complicated question. Based on the attitudes of the director/writer and Brando, I have no doubt that Maria Schneider was cast for her stunning figure, slim hips and large breasts. She did the best she could with an ill-defined role.
As far as the butter scene is concerned, I was surprised as to how non-explicit the visual aspects were. It's an intense scene but the actress was not raped with a stick of butter. Brando coats his figures with the butter and then his hand is seen going between the actress's thighs and to her ass. Now what he does with his hand is unseen but it's implied that he is digitally penetrating her anus prior to the simulated(?) anal sex scene which follows. If Brando does indeed insert his finger inside Ms. Schneider without her prior knowledge and permission, it is sexually assault, end of story. She says it happened. I believe her.
All in all the movie is a bore. The most impressive thing Brando does in the movie for a man of his age is flip from a reclined position on the floor to full standing like a gymnast.
Reinos (2017)
An interesting story from a different culture.
This is a movie about a freshman boy who arrives at college and falls in love with a more experience senior woman. He is starting out and the whole world is laid out before him. She is about to finish and realizes that ordinary life is about to replace her current life of study, drinking and sex. They have long conversations about life. They also have intense graphic sex. She asks him to bite her indicating that she likes some pain with her sex.
Then he starts to get jealous. There are periods where he cannot find her. There are injuries on her body and he asks her about them without getting an answer. He obviously believes they are from other partners. They break up for a period and he gets together with a girl who has had eyes for him. However, just as things are getting steamy between them, he bites her which for her is obviously a total buzzkill.
The movie leaves the lovers together but without a clear path forward. It's well worth the time.
Douches froides (2005)
An Interesting Look at a Different Part of the World
This film gets a lot of publicity because of the nudity and the threesome sex scene. However, it tells a story with a lot of humor about Clement's home life which takes up half the film. His father is a cab driver who loses his job because he got drunk at a party and drove. His mother pinches pennies to literally keep the power on which cause Clement to have to take cold showers. Get it? The other half of the film is about Clement, his girlfriend Vanessa, and his close friend, Mickael. There is a somewhat boring guy plot about Judo, making weight and jealousy.
Vanessa is the most interesting character of the three. She is openly sexual and readily jumps into a bawdy picture taking session at Michael's house (pre digital). There are four scenes where Salome' Stevenin, the actor playing Vanessa, is feature in a key way. First, there is the threesome. The two boys are wrestling and Vanessa is watching. She joins in to wrestle with Clement and Michael stays involved which, of course, leads to the three of them having sex multiple times. Second, there is the post threesome scene where Vanessa is left alone and has extended time fully nude and then cleaning up. A brave acting choice (hopefully) by Stevenin. Third, is a funny scene when Vanessa goes to get the morning after pill. The nurse asks her how many times she had sex and she says four, maybe five or six. When the nurse says its unusual for a man to be able to do it that often, she surprises the nurse by saying there were two guys. She further surprises her by saying it happened at the same time. The nurse is visibly impressed with Vanessa. The fourth time is a very puzzling sequence where the three teenagers decide to get a hotel room. Clement is to follow the other two but has problems. By the time he gets to the room Mickael is in the bathtub and Vanessa is undressing. He watches her undress and get in the tub with Mickael but doesn't enter the room. She sees him there but doesn't acknowledge him. He inexplicably leaves and is called by Michael but refuses to join them. When he later confronts Vanessa about her betrayal, she is puzzled. She says the sex with the two of them was fun and the sex at the hotel was fun and she doesn't understand why he wouldn't want more fun. Clement breaks up with her and then later realizes his mistake.
Clement is your typical jealous teenage boy. Vanessa is not your typical teenage girl. She enjoys sex just because its there. She doesn't appear to be after Mickael, the rich kid. He's just there and available. A film that was more about her would have been made this film very special.
She (2020)
Does not deliver on promising first episode.
The series opens with Bhumi already undercover as a prostitute. She talks big to her criminal target about sex. They go off to his apartment. The menace and the sexual tension are palpable. Then she starts to back pedal. He becomes aggressive. He touches her between her legs. He gropes her breasts. Eventually they are on the floor and she is mortified. As he starts to assault her she is tense and then she seems to relax and become turned on. The scene is highly sexually charged. Bhumi ends up with his gun and he is taken into custody. Whether she pretended or was really turned on is left to the viewer to ponder.
Then the series dials back the sexuality by eight or nine notches. What could have been a transformative series (think Girlfriend Experience with Riley Keogh), instead becomes a tease and a series of hackneyed scenes. Bhumi is repeatly sent undercover by what quickly becomes the Keystone Cops of Mumbai. The criminals surprise the cops and take her to a different place from the first encounter. Panic. They have Bhumi turn off her cell phone so they can't track her. Panic. The switch her with another person and the police lose her altogether. Panic.
There is sexual tension throughout the series. Bhumi is supposed to evolve and come into her sexual power through these experiences. They are laughable. Aditi Pahankar, who plays Bhumi, said she didn't want a "flesh show" which is her decision alone but what they got was no nudity with unbelievable sexual encounters. Bhumi recovers a cell phone for her sister from a guy trying to trade sex for it without even getting touched. After five teasing episodes, Bhumi finally is taken to the kingpin. He tells his men to strip search her something that can be easily implied off camera. However, on camera, they take off her top and shirt leaving Bhumi in sort of a crop top and underskirt. "She's clean." How do they know? She's still wearing cloths and they have not significantly touched her.
The ending is a howler. Bhumi conquers the drug kingpin by screwing him into submission but in a PG sort of way. The bottom line is that the series for which there will be a sequel has to decide if it wants to be a steamy Lifetime movie or a series where a somewhat shy ambitious woman acquires sexual agency in a realistic way.
The Affair: Episode #5.4 (2019)
Whitney Gets a Half Episode
In her Instagram feed, Julia Telles shares that Whitney gets three half episodes this season and this is the first. First, she does a wonderful job conveying quiet suffering and frustration to all around her especially her boss and her fiance. Second, Whitney has her first intimate scene with an old boyfriend which goes unexpectedly kinky. She is able to convey both confusion and acceptance (or pleasure) during this turn in the love making. Finally, it was a little distracting that they couldn't decide how out there the character was going to dress for the party. They put her in a super thin gold dress. As she is dressing, when she is at the party and when she returns home, she is wearing a bra under the dress to apparently make it more modest. However, once she and the ex-boyfriend get to his bedroom, the bra is obviously gone. Also her panties seem to change color. When she gets off the couch, there is a flash of light colored panties but in all other scenes the panties are black. I don't know if they were trying to comfort the actor by limiting the revealing scenes to a minimum or not. Obviously this was a distraction probably only to me but the overarching takeaway is that Julia Telles nailed it. Looking forward to her next half episode.
Big Little Lies: What Have They Done? (2019)
Do you really care about anybody?
Last year this was an engaging mini series based on the fact that we didn't know the big secret until the end. This year we all know the big secret. And even though the mothers were over the top, each seemed to have a redeeming characteristic. For instance the Reese Witherspoon character took the Shailene Woodley character under her arm and guided her through first grade. This year, nobody is sympathetic except for the Meryl Streep character who is naturally grieving the loss of her son but doesn't know what the monster that he actually was. I will keep watching but these primary characters did nothing but grate my nerves for 80% of the first episode.
The Girlfriend Experience: A Friend (2016)
Deeper into the Work
These reviews attempt to determine why a very hard working very smart law student goes from student to full time sex work by examining her sexual interactions. In this episode, there are four encounters, three on-screen and one off-screen.
Christine gets more interested in sex work first thoroughly checking out Avery's website. Then she talks to Avery about the life and ends up meeting her pimp, Jacqueline. She has pictures taken for her web page and Jacqueline soon sets her up with two clients.
In the first episode, it's revealed that she shares an apartment with a male student who has a woman over for the night. In this episode we find out that he and Christine have somewhat of a sexual past that's over but we really never are told the nature and extent of it.
She then pays $60 for a cab out to Avery's client's house where she meets Martin a second time. They return to the city where he rents a room and pays her for the second time. She has sex with Martin (for the second time?) but nothing can be gleaned from this encounter. She rides him and moans and that's about it.
Christine or Chelsea as she is now known, then meets her first John provided by Jacqueline. He is a good looking guy who is just a few years older than she is. They go back to his place. She sucks him and applies a condom. He then stands her up and spins her around, pulls down her panties, bends her over some furniture and enters her. Her face registers surprise and a little fear, then pleasure. This may may a true emotion since he cannot see her reaction. When he turns her to face him and continues the thrusting, she becomes more animated and aroused sounding but at the end after he comes, her eyes open and she looks away denoting acting. So for the part when she was not in control, it seemed like she was turned on which indicates what?
Then the twist. Avery has been dumped by her main client and kicked out of his house. Christine allows her to move in. Christine returns from her date to find Avery in bed with a client which she does not like. Later Avery comes into her bedroom, apologizes and asks to lay down. She then kisses Christine and Christine kisses her back. Avery strips and then goes down on Christine who really gets into it.
So what do we know so far. Christine likes sex. She likes it even when she's not in full control. And she likes it with women, or at least with Avery. This is not to say that she moves into sex work because it makes sex more available to her. It does indicate that sex work is attractive to her because sex with a variety of partners is an appealing activity for her.