Maison close

Typical of all-sex product from the once prestigious Marc Dorcel label, MAISON CLOSE is an episodic porn video set in a brothel. It's tiresome, but apparently Dorcel fans can't get enough of this stuff.

Each segment is introduced in black & white with first-person camera and all sorts of superimposed coding that anticipates the house style of the later popular TV series "Person of Interest". Basically we are led by superstar Tarra White into some room in the title brothel mansion, and then witness an explicit sex vignette (eight in all). Sum total of content.

Is that enough to constitute a feature film? Not in my book, but I'm sure the Dorcel staff has determined by now that all their scripting, directing and acting over the years has come to naught - the fans just want to see humping, preferably in glamorous settings. Great minds on this side of the Atlantic have also jumped to this same conclusion (witness the success of Jules Jordan for example), and so we have the currently bereft of intelligence state of pornography.

Besides White, the other girls are alluring, each playing directly to the camera as they service some john. This is definitely a B-picture on Dorcel's roster, with no big names beyond White and no location footage. Usual quota of sex is present: condoms, anal action, dildos, troilism and lesbian sex. An abstract scene out of Andrew Blake has Tarra sucking a vast array of dildos all sticking out of a black cloth backdrop, until she finds a real cock in the bunch to suck.