Belladonna's Heavy Petting

Consumers of girl/girl sex films are men whose heterosexuality and psyche preclude identification with men's sex organs and performance in pornography or guys who are threatened by it. As such the women must look like they'd readily and most willingly engage in sex with men. They must be femmes. They're made up to look attractive to men. The face and body makeup, not to mention the eye shadow appear to be applied by a crop duster. The color temperature is pushed to warm beyond sepia or the Sahara sand. The product is thin fantasy: unimaginative and lacking any sense of veracity.

Belladonna has done something very different in her latest video, Heavy Petting. Gone are the silly scenarios ("I'm having trouble yet again with my boyfriend...I'm getting sick of men!"), the bad bed springs and the awkward flatulent sound of skin slipping against the naugahyde of a cheap sofa. Gone are the desperate groping for clitorises (clitori?) with fingers, tongues, mouths, toys, and strap on plastic appendages moments into the film, along with the string of endless screaming faux orgasms designed to get the viewer off, however long that takes.

Heavy Petting dumps all that in favor of a background of pure white. She cools the color to selenium, over-exposes the video, boosts the contrast, and strips away all makeup, save eyeliner and mascara. Each scenario begins with the women dressed, but not dressed for the outside world. In each case we enter a dreamlike state. Two women kissing and touching each other as if suspended in our imagination behind a sonorous soundtrack of music and ethereal vocals: first in slow motion, deliberately blurred, moving into the sex itself, from the beginning of arousal to realistic conclusion with snippets of conversation exchanged. Nothing is covered up. Pale skin is pale, every bruise and blemish is revealed, and the sessions range from the tender to the earthy - in many cases both. Each session is distinctly different from the others. With five sessions and three hours of video you will find something that will appeal to you, down to the ground.

Viv Thomas pioneered this style of lengthy foreplay prior to the pussy grab - a poor choice of words now as everyone shaves their genital hair nowadays. His films are porn with an overlay of erotica, and he's made some wonderful ones. They aspire to erotica rather than mere porn....not that there is anything wrong with porn.

Rather than pornography verging on erotica, this is erotica verging on art. Some of the women have conventionally appealing bodies. Some do not. Some are established stars, some are not. None look glamorous; all are deeply appealing. By banishing the glam these women enter the realm of captivating beyond mere fantasy. To this viewer at least, these women never looked better.

What is the arresting appeal here? Tenderness is more erotic than just dirty talk and hitting high C. Most important, however, is that we can identify with the action. The women look like women we've make love to. They talk with each other while they have sex. They represent sex when it was good, before the toll of relationships set in and the playfulness gradually vanished. Such is the most appealing fantasy of all.

GG Porn that looks like they want to be there... less graphic but more intense.