All About Anna (2005) from Tuna |
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Tuna's notes
In the early to mid 1970's, it seemed that mainstream and porn might join hands, but video tape essentially fragmented the markets and ended that dream. The idea is making something of a comeback in arthouse circles. We now have "hardcore meets mainstream" art films in France, Denmark, The United States (Shortbus), the UK (9 Songs) and Asia. All About Anna is such a movie, albeit one targeted directly at the untapped potential of female audiences. Sex research indicates that women are physically aroused when watching porn films but, when questioned later, claim that they hated them. A Danish woman kept telling the executives at Zentropa Films that it would be possible to make porn that women would like. Zentropa told her to "put up or shut up," so she came up with a set of guidelines as to what a woman-friendly porno film would be like, and Zentropa (the home of Dogma 95) was in the porn business, to make porn by women and for women under the Puzzy Power banner. Their first two efforts were Constance, which was billed by Zentropa as "The first hardcore adult video produced by a mainstream film production company!", and Pink Prison. Those two and All About Anna, the third effort from the group, were made by following the guidelines established in the Puzzy Power Manifesto. In early 2001, Puzzy Power's function was transferred to Innocent Pictures, then a subsidiary of Zentropa, with the objective of producing new quality adult films, while distributing and handling the three films already made by Puzzy Power and HotMale, their gay specialty line. In June 2003, following the filming of All About Anna, Innocent Pictures became an independent company, and Anna was released as a partnership between the two fraternal entities. Anna, an English-language film made in Copenhagen and Paris, was their first contribution to a growing number of art films which contain some hardcore hetero elements and feature recognizable mainstream performers having actual sex on camera - in this case, Gry Bay, the actress and singer. Anna (Gry Bay) opens the film talking about love. She is on a boat with a good-looking man, and says, "Every woman needs three men, one for adventure and fun, one for stimulating conversation, and one for good sex. Johan was all three." It seems that Johan decided he needed adventure in his life, and took off for a five month cruise. After four months, he stopped writing, and she decided to get over him. She adopted an indulgent life style, but was beginning to settle on one man, Thomas Raft, until Johan returned and she decided Raft was not for her. She refused to move in with Raft, lost Johan's phone number, and took a female roommate (Eileen Daly) who shared her morals and lifestyle. She then plunged herself into her costume design work, and got an offer to work in Paris in a prestigious theater. As she was leaving, Johan showed up, having rented half of her apartment from Eileen Daly, who had no idea who he was, but intended to seduce him. Once in France, Gry realized what she really wanted. The story here is simple, but as a "coming of age" for Anna and a romantic comedy, the film and the personalities of the characters held my interest. The sex scenes are real, but even better, feel real without being boring. This film is highly recommended for those interested in the crossover of mainstream cultural figures into sex films. |
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Additional notes on the DVD special features
The original director's cut is on the three disk set, minus certain elements which the company had no legal rights to, and it is utter unwatchable crap. The entire director's cut makes Gry out to be a very angry and nasty person. It is full of jarring jump cuts and sped-up action, and seems to go way out of the way to avoid nudity. The cinematography was also poor. Further, the director had uncleared extras, and used a bunch of music she didn't have rights to. To give you an idea of the original director's cut, there is a scene where somebody throws a cum-filled condom on the floor, followed by a shot of Gry's dog sniffing it. The grossest part starts with the dog licking Gry on the mouth, after which she vomits in the kitchen sink, then kisses her old boyfriend on the mouth. In another example, she is doing her old boyfriend while her current boyfriend is taking a crap on camera and wiping his butt. The producer was clearly not happy with the director, finding her cut to be not only a technical and artistic failure, but a contractual one as well. According to the producer's commentary, the director intentionally made her version a softcore film, even though she was specifically contracted to make a hardcore film. It seems she considers genitalia gross looking. Also, even though the sex requirements were carefully written into Gry Bay's contract, Gry decided not to allow the woman to penetrate her, and the director simply acceded to her demands. Given the problems, the finished film is an amazing achievement. The producer, after taking control of the project, shot some pickup shots, and then letterboxed, which let him zoom in on certain scenes, and correct for jitter. The producer was able to reedit the footage into a good film, but a much softer one than the one originally foreseen before principal photography began. He could do no more because the director simply never shot the monster shots and other sex action in the script. |
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