Review of Pornography: A Thriller

This film is a myth and the object of a cult. Desire among gay people, desire to sexually do absolutely all one may desire, but also desire that everything that someone else might desire to do to one submissive subject may be done. It tries to show that love, any love I guess, gay love here, has that kind of absolute submissive dimension and that this submissive dimension may be exploited to the extreme by some who know there is an audience for that kind of kinky adventure. Is the film well done? Probably and after a while we lose track of the characters and the places, from New York to California and back again. We seem to be mixing old episodes and recent ones and present ones and maybe future one. We lose track of time and that is important because that kind of desire is so total and absolute that there is no limit to it, no time limit, no space limit, no limit whatsoever. That discourse is interesting because that is the very definition of any passion. What is surprising in this film is that it is interspersed with some sex scenes that are in no way really artistic, nor crude enough to be realistic. The films seems to prove what is said somewhere that any sex video, even snuff videos are fake, are not true. In other words there the film stops being realistic at all. Because that is not true. And there is a market for that kind of stuff, even for the real thing to be performed, if we can say so, in front of your very eyes. But what's more this sadism that the film seems to push aside is also a real element in many societies. The death penalty is nothing else and when it is shown on TV or even organized in stadiums like lapidating and hanging, or like some torturing in prisons or during war operations that is webcasted on the Internet, we can be sure that there is a market for that kind of real thing, I mean really real. So the film is interesting in a way when it shows the exploitation of the sex drive among gay people or people in general, but it is fantasizing when it pretends the snuffing side of it does not exist. At least Christopher Rice does not hesitate to set up that sadistic side in full view. Thanks God he does.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 8 Saint Denis, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID