Brianna Love: Her Fine Sexy Self

I know and love Brianna from her classic lesbian performances for Girlfriends Films, but her career is primarily boy/girl and this feature represents its zenith. John Leslie, the greatest actor-director in Adult Film history (an accolade I would have him share with Paul Thomas) directs and acts with heart, almost as a valedictory to his lengthy career.

With silver-grey hair and a rueful "seen it all, done it all" air about him Leslie plays Frankie Dapp, a Runyonesque character who runs a local bar but resembles a minor league gangster without portfolio. He's kind of the mayor of an L.A. combat zone, with very young beauty Brianna one of the folks he's taken under his wing to look out for. Early in the film Dapp remarks "The world has passed me by", and I found his performance quite moving.

Recognizing that this is porn, Leslie does not overload the lengthy (3-1/2 hour) opus with much plot -just extremely powerful sex scenes and colorful, even memorable spot characterizations. Main premise is Brianna's gullibility, falling in with bad company and getting into trouble. This permits Leslie to include violence in his narrative, both vividly enacted and just suggested, giving the movie (shot on video) a depth and impact absent from 99% of contemporary porn which is subject to the "non-violent" self-censorship prevalent in the 21st Century.

Key subplot involves the usually bald (shaved-head) Derrick Pierce as a creep named Bernard who hangs around the bar and after many tries succeeds one afternoon in getting Brianna to come home with him. He's into gang-banging (the sexual kind) and humiliating and physically abusing women, so Brianna comes out the worse for wear. Leslie as Frankie devises a unique entrapment method to punish Bernard, utilizing the talents of Christina Aguchi, an imposingl porn actress who handily takes care of the villain.

There are fine acting performances from many actors in this film including Darryl Hanah and John West, while the gonzo sex scenes starring Brianna are classic porn. Leslie also provides excellent segments of what I term Jazz Porn, in which the action is scored to an invigorating original jazz soundtrack by his collaborator Bill Heid (plus some bluesy vocals elsewhere keyed to Brianna's character). One lengthy group-sex/interracial-sex scene is scored to a very hip organ & sax jazz instrumental that reminded me of the late great Larry Young's experimental Blue Note LPs of the late '60s (featuring two tenor players in tandem) that preceded his historic joining with Tony Williams and John McLaughlin to form the fusion band "Lifetime".

If there were enough serious storyline porn films being made in recent decades to justify a "Great Books" approach to XXX, then "Brianna" would be a centerpiece in such a 21st Century collection.