潘多拉之镜

    This one isn"t bad as skin flicks go. The production values are high anyway. One of the actors even knows how to jump a horse over a low barrier. The plot is episodic -- aren"t they all? -- but linked by a central theme, a mirror that was struck by lightning three hundred years ago or something and reflects some of the encounters of its previous owners. The acting is what you"d expect. I can"t identify most of the performers, and it"s been a long time since I"ve seen it, but Veronica Hart wouldn"t be entirely out of place in a part in a movie designed for a more general audience. And Hart"s friend and rival has an appealing goofy quality and is given the best lines, including one that contains a reference to Olivia Newton John"s gynecologist. Aside from her quirkiness, she"s quite beautiful in a non-Hollywood way and constantly wears an expression that occupies some middle territory between pain and amusement. Jamie Gillis is a riot. He can"t act and looks like a schlub. I remember reading an interview in which he was asked what the rewards were for appearing in skin flicks and he was quite honest about the whole thing -- he got to make love to girls who were so beautiful they wouldn"t look twice at him if they passed him on the street. There"s a gorgeous old Cadillac in the 1930s episode. The musical score, lifted from existing material, is outstanding. I don"t know who chose it but he or she either looked hard for this stuff or has odd tastes. It begins with a beautiful, sad ballad on the Irish pipes and progresses through some appealing 1930s jazz to more ominous sounding modern pieces. More thought (and money) has gone into this production than into most examples of the genre, but the genre itself is limited in what it can do, aesthetically speaking. Since it"s a hardcore pornographic movie you must have explicit sexual encounters every few minutes. It would take a genius to make this format both physically stimulating and poetic, and the available geniuses were all on vacation when this was put together. The format suffers from the same limitations as an action movie or a war movie or a slasher movie or any other typical member of a well-known genre. The unavoidable question is: what do you fill in the gaps with, between sexual encounters, car chases, combat scenes, or horrifying murders? They"re still working on the answers.