Disc Reviews
About Cherry Review
Released to coincide with the release and recent success of Lovelace and perhaps more tenuously the release of a very British variation of the adult entertainment industry, The Look of Love about the life and career of the King of Soho, Paul Raymond comes a smaller more independent film Cherry about the rise to the top of the porn industry of a more recent, even contemporary new porn star, Lorelei Lee. Naturally the film charts the motivation and reasons of how and why Lee entered into porn. Lovelace and even other recent films that follow icons of the porn industry such as the seedy Autofocus (2002) and Wonderland (2004) about the well endowed John Holmes, as well as the fictitious Boogie Nights (1997) focus on the 1970s, to some the golden age of pornography whereas Cherry goes for a different angle in the more contemporary Lorelei Lee that uses the internet as its medium of choice. In a very postmodern way (can’t believe I’m writing about pornography and yet still manage to throw in the term Postmodern) the porn star took her name from Marilyn Monroe’s character in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and yes Lee is peroxide blonde (geddit).
Naturally a background of abuse is at the heart of the film, but not in an obvious way but instead in a socio-economic sense with a mother violently beaten by her husband, a father who neglects and looks contemptuously on his kids as well as her close and protective relationship with her sister. It takes a long while before we get to see the main character, named Angelina move into porn and instead we slowly see how she is both coerced and moves into the biz. Her boyfriend worships her body and convinces her she will receive good money if she has some photos taken with her clothes off. Nervously she agrees but this sours her relationship with her dusch boyfriend. Sick of her surroundings, despite her good grades at school Angelina decides to run away to San Francisco with her best friend, a boy called Andrew. Angie then begins working in a strip club where she meets Francis (James Franco) who introduces her to a world of glamour. Angie also signs up at an agency that does porn shoots and makes porn movies. During one of the stronger scenes in the film when she signs on at this agency she is asked a series of questions of what she would be willing to do: girl on girl, bondage, boy on girl, 2 boys on girl, machines etc. but she opts for the safer option of ‘solo’. She is filmed by Margaret (Heather Graham) who recognizes a quality in the now named Lorelei Lee and becomes close to Angela. In the meantime, naturally any close ties became difficult, never said better than in her final scene with Franco who can no longer handle what she does; nor with her BFF Andrew whom she can’t see is actually in love with her that sours when she walks in on him pleasuring himself to one of her videos on-line.
The film itself in many senses is actually quite tame; Boogie Nights was probably more extreme and ultimately the film is rather flat in its drama until Angelina’s final showdown with Franco. The fact the film was co-written by Lorelei Lee herself perhaps goes somewhere towards explaining this as she seems not to care or mind what she does for a living, at least while she is in the biz. As far as she sees it the problem is with other people. This to a casual observer does not come across but is inevitably the case in a classic scenario of a girl from the wrong side of the tracks, bright and intelligent who finds a way out but finds herself in a world in which she must keep her background, real name and life a secret, but conversely involved herself in a film about her own life.
Chris Hick