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ADULT DVD REVIEW INDEX
MODELS (1998)
Sin City DVD (region 0 NTSC)
d. Kris Kramski; pr. Kris Kramski, Matthew Taylor; scr. Kris Kramski; ph. Kris Kramski, Lauren Sky; m. Arlen Scheirbaum, Kris Kramski; ed. Kris Kramski; cast. James Bonn, Tina Tyler, Michael J. Cox, Dru Berrymore, Anita Blond, Nancy Vee
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Deglamorizing Adult Cinema: Bringing Behaviourist Naturalism to Pornography
Models is the second adult feature from Kris Kramski and the film which established his reputation as one of the more provocative talents in hardcore. Kramski spent his youth in France amongst models and soon followed his father’s career in high fashion photography before being reportedly told his pictures were too risqué.
Relocating to Southern California to shoot porn stills he disliked the overall lack of professionalism and, like Michael Ninn, then convinced a studio to give him money to do better. From there, Kramski has been able to achieve a level of professionalism in performance, narrative and characterization that remains rare in the industry. However, he has been outspoken about what he considers the prime incompetence of most contemporary porn directors – mostly former actors – and laments that video proliferation has effectively made the director credit meaningless. Indeed, such is his concern for directorial esteem, that Models may be considered as an ambitious young man’s attempt to bring a directorial sensibility back into a genre where there is very little – to restore the concept of personal vision. Although he may be following on from the likes of Andrew Blake, Michael Ninn and Antonio Passolini, Kramski’s film lacks their visionary zeal and may be better thought of as more naturalistic in design. It is not that his film lacks style, but rather that it favors deglamorization over stylization.
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Synopsis (contains spoilers)
Models is a behind-the-scenes film about the porno still industry, intent to expose the lesser known goings-on in the porn world.
James Bonn plays a still photographer who makes his living shooting porn with a variety of young models, most of whom he also has sex with. He has a dutiful female assistant (Tina Tyler) and a male co-worker (Michael J. Cox) with whom he shares the responsibilities. After a new young model shows up for work, and is shared between Bonn and Cox, Bonn is visited by a woman (Nancy Vee) seeking a job as a receptionist. She is given the job, but says that her duties as the manager of a band may have to take her away from it. Bonn is relatively unconcerned and soon attempts to initiate Vee into his more hedonistic circle. Although she reveals lesbian interests in his assistant, she is reluctant to fully participate in Bonn’s world, resisting his come-ons although watching him jerk-off in front of her. Indeed soon she must accompany her band interstate and thus temporarily leaves the scene. Meanwhile Bonn and his company are back at work with a veteran model (Dru Berrymore) and again with a couple of young European models who dislike male hands touching them. After the arduous work, Bonn and friends are about to relax when Vee returns. Her band has been successful and now she has come back to possibly participate in Bonn’s world after all.
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Behaviourist Erotica: Work Meets Play in the Jizz Biz
Models is a remarkable porn film in many ways. The sex is often matter-of-fact and not all of it leads to the expected climax, occurring almost as part and parcel of a routine lifestyle.
Indeed, Models is all about the documentation of a lifestyle. Its characters are participants in a defined circle of activity – pornography photography – and the film explores the extent to which the sexual job affects their sexual morality. Defining oneself by one’s work thus has importance in this film’s consideration of what amounts to occupational morality as Kramski examines the role of sex in self-definition, occupation and even self-assessment. By only gradually introducing the sexual content, the film places an emphasis on character and place, suggesting a slyer determinism than is usual for such films: the symbiotic conditioning of work and morality. In this respect, Vee’s story of independent woman choosing to participate in this scene finally as an equal rather than being coerced into it (although arguable) is the most telling, held in contrast to Bonn’s narcissistic but still questioning self. By skilfully defining and then contrasting the characters, Kramski puts forward a character-based study of identity, individual and gender, within the casual sex world. The glamour is taken out of the posed sex and an effective, strange casual but occupational equity placed on the “natural”, as in the non-work related, sexual encounters.
The film is thus a social document, an exploration of people surrounded by sex and on the verge of disillusionment with it, but somehow compelled to remain immersed in it – such is the paradox of sexual freedom perhaps.
Much of the film concerns the imperative to maintain an individual identity within this lifestyle of casual fornication although Kramski is intent to reveal the inherent self-absorption that underlies it in his characterization of Bonn. In the sense that Models is autobiographical at least in some small part, this can be seen as Kramski’s bitter assessment of the directorial presence behind pornography as a genre – self-absorbed but casual sexuality. He does not condemn nor endorse this, the film being more intent to reveal and document without judgement. By concentrating on the lifestyle of these pornographers, Kramski is able to make a separation between pornography as erotic product and as an on-going process in the definition of a lifestyle for those who create it. In that sense it recalls the conventional art vs. lived art thesis although avoids directly confronting the nature of porn as possible art, at least in still photography form. In this way, by exposing the behind-the-scenes machinations and even the ordinariness involved in the production of a porn image, Models works as a deglamorization of porn. As such a process, it is revealed to have its conditioning moral effects on the psyche, just as would any other occupation.
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Workplace Determinism and Gen-X Attitudinal Conviction
The fullscreen visual transfer is vibrantly competent throughout, capturing the film’s wholly naturalistic video aesthetic.
It begins with unexpected tension, but the prowling camerawork soon reveals a partially deterministic intent – exploring those environs that these characters have made for themselves. Sense of place is paramount to Models as most of the film is confined to Bonn’s combined workplace and home. The studio / loft lifestyle is thus recreated with detail and conviction. The first few sexual instances are brief and without money shots. During the recreations of the photo shoot, nice use is made of a mobile camera, keeping the models in shot whilst suggesting Bonn’s mostly offscreen presence as controller, director and manipulator of the staged image. This intertextuality works well with the sly deconstructionist agenda behind much of this film’s conception of staged sexuality vs. more genuine sexuality (though all are coded as representational within the genre’s modes of looking). The film has a steady pace, integrated sex scenes and much of it has a cinema verite, almost documentary look, in keeping with the notion of the film as behind-the-scenes expose. Nancy Vee’s scene with a dirty toilet brush is disgustingly unglamorous and was much criticized. The mobile, active camerawork during the photo shoots is contrasted nicely to the more static and slower off-hours scenes, giving pace and structure to the film.
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Defining 'Occupational Morality': Dialogue-Driven Sexual Characterization with Discursive Maturity
The sound transfer is available in Dolby Digital 5.1 and is an accomplished if rather routine mix. One of the thrills of Models is its dialogue-driven script, a rare opportunity for naturalistic work in a genre driven by banality or stylization in terms of its talkiness.
The opening aspect similar to voice-over narration introduces Bonn in his world of loveless sex and disillusionment whilst the remainder of the film explores just how he finds a home here nonetheless. There are some jumps in background diegesis affecting traffic noise and such-like but these are minor issues. However, there is a noticeable background hiss through much of this transfer. During the photo shoot scenes, Bonn’s instructions to the models capture the sense of the photographer (as director stand-in) as orchestrator. The sex scenes feature a lot of mostly male moaning and dialogue within sex scenes also adds to the naturalism of the scenes and often to their comedic effect. Likewise, the confusion in the scene with the European models unable to speak English adds to the evolving humour of the piece. Some dialogue seems to be coercive in nature, fully justified by the proceedings and integrated into the fine discursive nature of the film’s theme of occupational morality. Humour emerges from Dru Berrymore’s performance as a veteran model: indeed, the acting and vocal delivery of all often approaches the improvised without ever seeming unconvincing.
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DVD Treats
In the way of special features are: a photo gallery; a website promo for Sin City DVD; a “Sexy Talk” option that replays the opening pre-menu advertisement; and previews for an assortment of teen titles – Eighteen and Awesome, Eighteen and Anxious, Just 18, and Just 18 # s 2, 3 and 4. With the exception of the photo gallery, the special features are unrelated to the film. Indeed, only the absence of special features related to Models itself prevents this DVD from being outstanding. Such packaging of special features with a preview-heavy intent is, however, common industry practice. Nevertheless, where films have a reputation over and above the rut of porndom, greater attention is validated.
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Models
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