Ever the trailblazer, Dana Vespoli brings great sincerity and expertise to this "lost in the shuffle" 3rd volume of her ongoing Sweetheart Video series about lesbian crypto-incest.
I was pleased that this feature downplays the incest angle, as it does not emerge as relevant compared to the overriding themes of this story of two young women finding (and expressing) their true selves. The fact that Dana chooses to tackle serious subjects (and do a better job than many of her mainstream peers) within an unlikely Adult Cinema framework is just another unexamined topic out there worthy of future Masters theses.
Ultra-serious opening is set in a hospital exam room, where -her face expressly left off camera- star Raven Rockette puts on a strap-on dildo to wear under her clothing and wraps her breasts tightly as if in some period movie about nuns or repressed women. Her doc played by director Vespoli discusses the impending sex reassignment program (to take place over a 5-year period) whose goal is to convert Raven into Ray, the man she was born to be but trapped in a woman's body.
Nominal story line has her heading home from college on spring break to have it out with her mom and step-dad about her future. She arrives at their new mansion (setting is a very familiar porn shooting location, notable for its big brass doors with see-through half-moon glass panes), where she meets for the first time her step-sister played by Shyla Jennings.
Film is basically a two-hander, as all the other characters are either absent from the screen and just fictional personages on the other end of one-sided phone conversations (the duo's shared parents) or flashback women injected into the show to vary the sexual content. In their first on-screen feature together, the team is super: Raven underplaying in her almost stoic manner, contrasted with effusive, rubber-faced Shyla, always a peppy bundle of energy. I'm sure the fans will lap up their sexual "chemistry" (21st Century porn's most overworked noun) but I dug the acting tête-à-tête.
Well-written Vespoli script (there's a novelty in today's Lesbian porn - hundreds of Gamma and Girlsway features are shot ad lib more or less) includes not just a sensitive look at the issues a transgender youngster faces (even her doctor character is transgender, having transitioned a decade earlier) but also the lesbian coming-out phenomenon. Main theme of discovering and being oneself is a timeless subject matter in fiction and increasingly in real life, so why not in the world of Adult Entertainment? If more pornographers would display the creativity and seriousness on view here, perhaps their industry might earn a modicum of respect -something I have accorded to it (rightly or wrongly) ever since the Golden Age of soft-core ('60s) and emerging hardcore ('70s).
I was pleased that this feature downplays the incest angle, as it does not emerge as relevant compared to the overriding themes of this story of two young women finding (and expressing) their true selves. The fact that Dana chooses to tackle serious subjects (and do a better job than many of her mainstream peers) within an unlikely Adult Cinema framework is just another unexamined topic out there worthy of future Masters theses.
Ultra-serious opening is set in a hospital exam room, where -her face expressly left off camera- star Raven Rockette puts on a strap-on dildo to wear under her clothing and wraps her breasts tightly as if in some period movie about nuns or repressed women. Her doc played by director Vespoli discusses the impending sex reassignment program (to take place over a 5-year period) whose goal is to convert Raven into Ray, the man she was born to be but trapped in a woman's body.
Nominal story line has her heading home from college on spring break to have it out with her mom and step-dad about her future. She arrives at their new mansion (setting is a very familiar porn shooting location, notable for its big brass doors with see-through half-moon glass panes), where she meets for the first time her step-sister played by Shyla Jennings.
Film is basically a two-hander, as all the other characters are either absent from the screen and just fictional personages on the other end of one-sided phone conversations (the duo's shared parents) or flashback women injected into the show to vary the sexual content. In their first on-screen feature together, the team is super: Raven underplaying in her almost stoic manner, contrasted with effusive, rubber-faced Shyla, always a peppy bundle of energy. I'm sure the fans will lap up their sexual "chemistry" (21st Century porn's most overworked noun) but I dug the acting tête-à-tête.
Well-written Vespoli script (there's a novelty in today's Lesbian porn - hundreds of Gamma and Girlsway features are shot ad lib more or less) includes not just a sensitive look at the issues a transgender youngster faces (even her doctor character is transgender, having transitioned a decade earlier) but also the lesbian coming-out phenomenon. Main theme of discovering and being oneself is a timeless subject matter in fiction and increasingly in real life, so why not in the world of Adult Entertainment? If more pornographers would display the creativity and seriousness on view here, perhaps their industry might earn a modicum of respect -something I have accorded to it (rightly or wrongly) ever since the Golden Age of soft-core ('60s) and emerging hardcore ('70s).