Girl/Boy

Dana Vespoli has a sort of Jekyll and Hyde porn career: successfully directing well-made lesbian features and also trying to prove something (I'm not sure what) by making outré gonzo videos of the kink persuasion. This is one of the latter and I found it unsatisfying from start to finish.

Part of the problem is Dana's injecting too much of herself on-screen: not content with directing 4 dissimilar vignettes, she also is the center of attention in two of them. Perhaps she is a fan of Norman Mailer's book "Advertisements for Myself".

Case in point is initial vignette, which runs well over 50 minutes long as an endless sex scene sans characters/dialog or story. That is unsupportable, and this one sinks under its own weight. In a motif she repeats later, she and Ramon Nomar are both dressed in black suits & white shirts (male attire) and they have an endless threesome with utterly beautiful (and 100% feminine) Valentina Nappi. Nappi turned me on without question, but the endless switching of positions (emphasis on anal sex), Dana's black strap-on dildo and especially her special Gaping moment were both a turn-off and source of tedium. Basically, the whole scene comes off more of a stunt to impress than entertainment.

Second segment has unusual technique, drawn from the early career play book of Brian De Palma before he sold out to Hollywood. A lengthy split-screen segment has Danny Wylde putting on a dress and applying heavy eye makeup as he awaits the arrival of Veruca James, latter driving around and shopping. Full- screen takes over when they get together to hump. The gender-bending of Danny in drag is quickly abandoned as they remove their clothes for sex and a nicety like eye makeup cannot compete on screen with humping as he treats her roughly, slapping her, forcing a deep throat (and gagging) and shoots on her belly. Overall result: no big deal.

Big set-piece, oddly nominated for an industry award (my sure sign of "hmmm... what's up with that?") pits androgynous star Jiz Lee with big-dick champ Manuel Ferrara. They are both wearing the black suits and white shirts, making me wonder if Dana is planning a porno riff on MEN IN BLACK someday. After Jiz does a cryptic, hip little dance routine, Manuel magically materializes on the couch with her and they hump. Equally magical in the materialization vein is his condom, which appears (for vaginal penetration) and disappears (for blow job) at will via the magic of jump-cuts. Scene is marred by horrendous color grading, which has Jiz featuring a deathly pallor in some shots, while rosy-cheeked and eared in adjacent shots leading to Manuel's delayed money shot (there is a lengthy sequence of Jiz jerking him near the end of the scene in which he can't seem to deliver).

Dana returns for the finale, which I probably would have enjoyed as a stand-alone and which does not really fit the feature's overall gender-identity premise. It is more about role reversal and corny in that respect.

Ms. Vespoli is a busy career woman, on her cell phone planning her travel schedule. She may or may not be herself or rather a businesswoman. At any rate, she has no time for frills, so orders up a male prostitute (well-cast Johnny Castle) to service her for an hour. That's all she wrote -woman in charge, man as sex object. Not like the gender roles of the previous vignettes, perhaps just dating back to the '40s or '50s (SEE: Rosalind Russell or Kate Hepburn in many movies using this theme, without explicit sex of course).

The Dana/Johnny sex is well-done, but ho-hum, and the main item of interest is our auteur constantly praising big John, with admiration for his physique, technique and the occasional exclamation on the order of "You're so f*cking sexy". There's no ending, just a money shot on her belly, landing on an unidentifiable article of clothing around her midriff -Dana has an odd fetish of not getting naked, keeping some clothing on in each segment no matter what.