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La Chatte à Deux Têtes (Porn Theater)
The DVD:
A matronly woman with long dark hair and a sordid past presides over the cashier's booth of a Parisian porno theater. Everyday, she greets the same groups and gangs: the hustlers, the drag queens, the cross-dressers and their stock in trade, namely, the incredibly curious patrons. As she sells her tickets and tells her tales of love, lust and loneliness, the men parade in and out, checking their seats (and their chances) before they take them. Those willing to "service" their naughty needs circle them like sexual vultures. One regular is an old homosexual man in his mid-50s. He has AIDS and refuses to get treatment. For him, every night at the theater is a new adventure in trying to recapture his faded youth. The cashier understands and sympathizes. She discusses poetry and HIV positivity with him. She even offers to have a three way with him and the young projectionist, newly arrived in town, who is constantly flirting with her. As they discuss the possibility of such an act, and how far they've both come in their equally unhappy lives, the tricks continue to filter in and out of the theater. They are all looking for the same thing within these filthy walls. A little human connection. Some physical attention. A first chance at something forbidden. A last chance at feeling alive.
La Chatte à Deux Têtes (rough translation, "The Two-Headed Pussy" and retitled for DVD as Porn Theater) is a very disquieting film. Not because of what it shows as much as for what is leaves out. Setting any movie inside an adult establishment of any kind begs the need for some hardcore imagery. And Chatte doesn't shy away from the graphic images. Those who find the notion of gay sex to be repulsive or disturbing will take much of this film's blunt beefcake business a little too seriously. Apparently part of a recent trend in French Cinema, the pushing of plausible boundaries between art and sex is definitely explored here. But there is also something absolutely fatal that is left out. There is not a single recognizable moment or manner of interpersonal interaction among the so-called characters. Indeed, Porn Theater is just one badly scored soundtrack away from being a 42nd Street meat market extravaganza. This mixture of message movie and homosexual cruising documentary just can't get itself centered. Director/star Jacques Nolot wants to explore the mindless, mechanical aspects of bathhouse buddy sex, but he doesn't want to give the participants any manner of recognizable characteristics. This is a movie about hardcore erotica that is as sterile as a symposium on STDs. It treats human sexual contact as a random spin of the wheel and never backs away from its strong suggestions of degradation and humiliation. Indeed, men as a class could file a slander suit against this film for depicting them as driven almost exclusively by their dick. Unfortunately, the truth is also a defense to any upcoming litigation.
The cardinal offense in most explorations of the sex industry (and those who participate in it) is that the people involved are never made into three-dimensional individuals. They are always rendered in formula: the hooker with the heart of gold, the out of control adult film star, the sad and dejected drag queen. But in this current political atmosphere of metrosexuality, where exploring one's inner gayness is virtually a mandate, to make everyone a confused craver of cheap thrills is equally contemptible. A film like Boogie Nights works because we get to know everyone involved in the business of XXX films; from the winsome idealism of Dirk Diggler to the painstaking professionalism of Jack Horner. But Porn Theater doesn't want to make its participants into characters. The main individuals aren't even given names. Perhaps, they are meant to remain incredibly casual acquaintances, no identity inferring a "no strings attached" ideology (0h how very post-modern and neo-realist!). But the truth is that without a connection to the people here, from the blank entities delivering their dull life stories to maudlin men taking it up the ass in the aisle, the audience has no reason to get emotionally involvement or interested. Director Nolot has to understand this and yet Porn Theater is vacant and void, so passive it could be mistaken for an inert gas. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to what is occurring onscreen, and yet everyone acts like the Gospel of gay sex is being performed.
Of course, this could all be a part of the experiment, an analysis by an avant-garde filmmaker about how much a modern audience will accept. Is character really necessary when all you want to focus on are random acts of homosexual sex? What are graphic blowjobs and multiple shots of erect male nudity supposed to suggest except what they appear to be? Are men really so sexually stunted that they will surround one willing couple and constantly try to find a warm place to penetrate? And do the cops really wonder aloud why gay cruisers prefer straight pornography (the primary make-up of the attending audience seems to answer that query sufficiently)? Nolot may be trying to point out the sterilizing effect of pornography, how it renders everyone and everything it touches into merely a menagerie of genitalia. No personalities. No backstory. No overt individualizing factors. Just human biological forms filling the screens or roaming the aisles and rows of this dilapidated theater, looking to satisfy an urgent want. But at some point, overt invention becomes tedious thumb twiddling and you can see it in the non-linear nature of Porn Theater. Whenever Nolot has nothing significant to say (or when he wants his meandering monologist main characters to recharge their verbal volleys) he cuts to long tracking and dolly shots of the cinema audience, all hopped up and waiting for their cue to climax. Or worse, he gives us snippets of the onscreen sex film, which is either the most authentic recreation ever produced or the worst new adult movie ever made. None of this builds drama or entertainment value because there is no indication about how to feel. Without a polished script filled with well-written character exchanges, the haphazard scenes and sequences means that Porn Theater is very uninvolving.
One does have to credit Nolot for his framing and sequence choreography though. There are many times in Chatte when the patrons of the theater resemble war-torn refugees, the sad silent victims in the clash of cultures. There is also a strange, living dead ideal to the way in which the sex situations are handled. When one of the "ladies" circling the cinema finally lands a man to service, the rest of the aroused men quickly gather around like zombies to fresh meat. Indeed, the sex is so impersonal and slapdash that it hardly seems like copulation and appears more like defilement. The overwhelming aura of pain and debasement in this movie and the atmospheric cues Nolot uses are occasionally ingenious. But then he has to force his hand and lather on the significance, indulging in telltale iconography that renders his symbols so obvious as to shriek of an amateur eye. At the beginning of the film, the cashier shoos away a group of pigeons, shaking her head the entire time at the waste product they've left behind. At the end of Porn Theater, we are treated to the same type of tracking shot, this time down the rows of the theater. There is the same manner of mess, filth left by its own inherent flock of fiends. However, the grime was created by human sexual release equally as foul and fetid as bird shit. And the actual cinema is located down a dirty flight of steps that seem to suggest the pathway to Hell itself. Subtlety is not Nolot's forte, but there are times when you can almost see his vision trying to work itself out. But in the end it's all for the sake of some stupid, redundant mess.
Overall, Porn Theater is nearly impossible to enjoy. While the acting is uniformly good (and some of these men are NOT giving a performance so much as living out their own fantasy agendas onscreen) and there are some sound directorial flourishes, the movie is fractured and ill defined. Scenes of philosophical opining by the "done it all, seen it all, loved it all" lady of the cage are interspersed with a transvestite man having his entire body caressed (and then violated) by men in the act of "holding their own". Men check their seats with lighters before sitting to avoid the filth that could be there and yet they rut around in spent semen and other bodily fluids to get their rocks off. Those not seeking solace in the grope of a gangbang are too busy listening to the sound of their own voice to make any coherent sense. There is even that entire sub-plot about AIDS and how precaution is handled/avoided, but it is completely under-developed. Indeed, "minor" is a good word to describe this film overall. It is obvious that director Nolot wants to push the limits of graphic sexuality on the screen while at the same time exploring the concept of aging and attraction. But he is much more concerned with full frontal shots of erect penises and images of men pleasuring each other with their mouths. In your standard XXX adult fare, there are at least extended sequences of intimate human congress without the benefit of backwards glancing. And there is usually a money shot at the end. Porn Theater has nothing so substantial to offer. It goes out with a whimper, not a bang.
The Video:
La Chatte à Deux Têtes is not a very pleasant film to look at. The 1.66:1 non-anamorphic image is dull, lifeless and quite shoddy at times. It appears to be a direct lift from a first generation laser or PAL presentation and there is a lack of detail and depth shown as a result. And for a film that spends as much time as it does in the dark, the image is overly murky. Occasionally, important action (or graphic porn) is indecipherable. While pixelization is kept to a minimal and the outdoors scenes have a decent snap to them, the image overall is just not up to DVD quality standards.
The Audio:
Presented in French with fairly decent English subtitles, the aural offering on this DVD is merely marginal. When we are inside the movie theater, the moans and groans from the onscreen movie tend to obliterate almost all other dialogue and while a purpose can be envisioned for why this would be (furthering Nolot's notions of anonymity and disconnect) it is, in reality, just annoying. The scenes topside, near the cashier's desk, are all clean and clear. But this is not some major sonic achievement that requires a complete overhaul of your home theater experience. You'll be able to understand a fair percentage of this stupid sex study and that's probably all you need.
The Extras:
If your idea of valid extras is a collection of trailers, then this DVD is loaded with the bonus goodies you so enjoy. The four films highlighted all seem to focus on sex and sin, but each take a different approach. About the only interesting title is Beefcake (a perusal of this website and the Internet indicates that this preview is rather omnipresent: it turns up literally everywhere on other DVDs). As a campy, kitschy look at the beginnings of gay pornography, it appears to be a light and airy hoot. The rest of the trailers offered are super serious explorations of the erotic and the psychotic. And that is all we get here. No interviews or additional information to help make sense of this cluttered cinematic experience.
Final Thoughts:
Porn Theater is the kind of movie that would have conservatives up in arms, not only because it shows near hardcore acts, but also because it makes homosexual cruising seem dirty, seedy and vile. Just the ammunition the close-minded need to foster their prejudicial agenda. It's bad enough to be an individual invested in an alternative lifestyle without having some high-minded French filmmaker exploiting your activities for the sake of some pointless movie. If director Jacques Nolot had merely focused on the three main characters and given them actual personalities and traits, the dramatic dynamics seem endless: The older woman and the younger man; The younger man and the older man; The threesome; The individuals themselves. Forget about the fornication and the closet cases in the dark. Forget about how pornography renders sex impersonal, therefore any theater showing it must be an uncongenial meat market of empty acts as well. Ignore the 'done better by professionals' scenes of ersatz-XXX copulation. Just tell us the story of these people and surprise; you may actually have a movie that works. But Porn Theater is not interested in that type of film. It wants to push boundaries and shock. It wants to suggest instead of sell. But it fails on almost every level. The subject and the social implications are just too complex to allow for such indistinguishable storytelling. Just like the French title of the porno film within the film, what a two-headed pussy is exactly doesn't make a great deal of sense. And that describes La Chatte à Deux Têtes perfectly.
Want more Gibron Goodness? Come to Bill's TINSEL TORN REBORN Blog (Updated Frequently) and Enjoy! Click Here
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