T**M
Weird flick
You know, if you're female, you might actually be really satisfied with this movie. If you're male, and you're expecting good soft-core, which Mystique Films always has been known for, you're going to be disappointed.I'd never heard of this movie and assumed when buying it that it was much newer. Then I saw that it was from Mystique Films and instantly got enthusiastic about the possibilities. Mystique was a home-run hitter for the Playboy Channel in the late '90s, early 2000s, and along with Eros helped blaze a trail through the soft-core universe...a trail constructed entirely by beavers. Ahem.And then there's this, a boring, plodding, meandering, LONG, plot-heavy vanity project for a writer and director who obviously had bigger aspirations at some point in their careers. Something about a novelist and his live-in who fights with him constantly, so he falls in love with a painting. Yeah, seriously--that's the plot. There is pitifully little nudity, no full exposure and four or five times when--I don't know how to describe it exactly, but what appears to be a pubic bib is visible on camera on two of the females, who are unattractive anyway. In later years this would have been a tiny little patch that covers only the barest essential parts--in some cases there would be nothing covering them at all. But when this was shot, as it turns out in 1996--I didn't even know that Mystique was active that far back--I guess that that still was uncharted water and the sex scenes were much more banal.The acting is solid, and the script actually is fairly interesting once it finally puts its wheels to the ground, but watching it for me was like sticking your hand under a running faucet that you had expected to be cool, only to find out that it's actually extremely hot. Sometimes you want that hot water, but only when you're ready for it.I had been ready to see a raucous sex film with just enough plot to keep things taped together. Instead I got a high-minded independent production with a bunch of people who seemed to have forgotten that their little movie was going to be shown on THE PLAYBOY CHANNEL. Again, a lot of that probably has to do with the date of production, but at this point that doesn't matter much to me. Heck, unrated versions of movies from four and five years earlier were way hotter. Better-looking women would have helped, although I still would have been frustrated because they wouldn't have gotten naked enough.Pretty safely I can say avoid this one...again, unless you're female and have to trick yourself into watching sexual situations.
