Johnny "Buttman" Stag's high-water mark in porn has to be his Fashionistas movies and stage shows, latter the XXX answer to Cirque du Soleil (what was the question?). But his teaming up with the talented duo Misha Cross & Sam Bentley, under the influence of Rocco Siffredi, has resulted in "Hard in Love", the first four hours of which are decidedly underwhelming.
For me, this new and ambitious project shares a key defect of "Fashionistas" - the emphasis on set-pieces and "immersion" porn, which tends to overwhelm the story line and characterizations. Just as we were made to feel some Rumsfeld "shock & awe" at the antics of Belladonna before, here we literally suffer through interminable "sex games" of the two heroines and their lesbian friends.
My reference point will be unfamiliar to most (or perhaps all) porn enthusiasts out there, but I would suggest back in the soft-core era Mai Zetterling's classic and forgotten incest saga "Night Games" starring Ingrid Thulin as the model for this excessive approach. There is by definition no such thing as gonzo in the world of soft-core. Stagliano working uncensored manages to combine a gonzo ethic with an inner urge to tell a story and entertain -and it's no contest that gonzo wins out every time.
Film begins with an interminable night club staging for group sex. The footage is seriously under-lit, a failing that's acknowledged (sort of) by providing on the DVD separate footage shot for the same sequence as a "bonus", considered defective. I thought the entire scene was defective.
Counterpont is provided by dominant Angel Long (the film's secret weapon - a British actress who's been on the scene forever and never gets recognition) having Sam manhandle cute Henessy under her supervision in a separate vignette.
As Sam's other half, Misha feels neglected and hooks up with sexy Nikita Bellucci for a very trendy and glamorous humping in a mansion which eats up endless running time. Beyond the endless in-your-face BDSM lesbian sex, no advancement in the plot is achieved - you have to wait for Part 2.
A very helpful half-hour BTS reveals that although director Johnny followed his stars' screenplay carefully, he re-edited the scenes in post-production, moving up the Nikita vignette to finish Part 1, leaving a key Sam/Misha sex scene for later on. Interviews with associate producer Siffredi reveal he had an enormous influence on Misha, at least, and the film's locations are his dressing room, his parking garage, etc., making him the power behind the throne here. Rocco's philosophy of doing the unexpected and pushing his partner out of her comfort zone is the driving force behind so much of what we watch here -the viewer is not supposed to be aroused but rather to be impressed.
But the allure of both Bentley and Cross is what makes "Hard in Love" worth watching, even though there's enough tedium to permit one not to simply leave the room to go to the kitchen and make a ham sandwich (my admonition back from the days decades ago when I would review VHS tapes but apply a "no stoppage" cinema rule to the performance, preferring to let the show run rather than ever cheat and hit pause) but time to prepare a full-course meal and return without having missed anything of note.
