Liberté sexuelle (2012)

Director: Ovidie

Screenplay: Ovidie

Cast: Liza Del Sierra as Olga; Sharon Lee as Suzy; Francesco Malcom as Jean; Phil Holliday as Garcin; Titof as Yves; Angell Summers as Estelle

Obscurities, Oddities and One-Offs

Another review of a pornographic film, and again questions has to be asked. Can I review this? Is it justifiable to? Can my words offer any insight? Can the material be of interest for a review? And of course, can anything be taken away that isn't just about the sex?

It might be absurd to even worry of these things, but it's a personal anxiety that these reviews might put off readers. This particular case however offers interesting context as we're dealing with a film directed by a female filmmaker named Ovidie, someone I have actually encountered as she has a role in Bertrand Bonello's The Pornographer (2001), a film from when she was still an adult porn performer and was in a scene excised in detail for sexual explicitness by the British Board of Film Classification. Hers is a fascinating history - a philosophy student and feminist whose once condemned pornography only, upon researching the material and learning of the female porn stars' lives, had a drastic change of mine to the material and started acting in these films herself. In that time onwards, she has worked in a Lars von Trier produced work (All About Anna (2005), starred in one of the last films of one of my favourite directors, Jean Rollin's sadly difficult to find La nuit des horloges (2007), moved away from porn acting to directing them, and into documentaries too, including Pornocracy (2017) which is her views of the ethical issues surrounding companies who run "free" websites like YouPorn and the sexuality of Millennials.

I am still fascinated by this figure, and wish to actually track down more of her work out of legitimate interest, especially as she has written on the subject of sexuality as much. It's a bit with a heavy heart that Liberté sexuelle is just conventional, all in spite of it toying with a potentially interesting subject in mainstream or hardcore material of polygamy, in which a cynical reporter for a TV series (played by Ovidie herself) visits a commune who is open to free sex with each other. Polygamy is a complicated subject and the film tries to tackle it on the surface. That the head male who owns the house does reference how apes are polygamist is raised. How there's a sequence of them all going in a mini-bus to have medical tests for STDs is seen. How there's an openness, whilst technically in couples, to them without jealously, despite Ovidie's character constantly trying to stir the pot, is there. The biggest plot point is to do with one of the female members becoming pregnant , a major issue as in real life as, when monogamy is socially viewed as the ideal and is legally enforced, it is entirely possible for children to be taken away from parents who are openly polygamous as these characters are.

In light of this, Ovidie's character becomes the villain, an antagonist whose own romantic strife, disconnected to her work and in a program that is manipulative to induce cracks to appear for the likes of a mail order bride, is matched by her prodding at why no one in this commune ever felt jealous of their other halves kissing someone else let alone having sex with them. Yes, from a background of monogamy being a cultural institution being found even in the modern day, even in secular lifestyles, her questions can be the issues of the viewers', an attempt at a dialogue which is part of provoking questions on this issue. In fact it would've been much more rewarding, even in lieu to the fact this is pornography first, if it had gone a little further with this narrative.

The film doesn't really get any further from opening the conversation instead, and this is where the discrepancy between porn's purpose to titillate (to be frank, to masturbate to or to bring a couple watching this to recreate the mood) and art, posing an issue. I'll argue you can have titillation and art - issues like gender politics and objectification are among some of the biggest issues with pornography, but with the form itself a greater awareness of this can be rectified, something which gains greater weight knowing the filmmaker was once an anti-porn feminist before she had a drastic revaluation of the medium through her thoughts on the liberating properties of female eroticism. Artistic quality is an entirely different kettle of fish though, which softcore cinema has been able to negotiate with greater ease because they didn't need to grind the pace down with actual sex. The film to its credit tries to work around this - the sex scenes are short, and there's attempts to bring them out into more playful ways, such as a girlfriend of a man having sex with another commune member merely saying hi and passing out the room, or when Liza Del Sierra as Olga borrows a spare camera from the TV crew and spends a night having a lot of sex in a playful romp.

From https://s6.dpic.me/02214/83ov07ux2cd0.jpg

Actually, let's stay with Liza Del Sierra as, whilst everyone else to be honest is just okay, Del Sierra stands out beyond being a visibly dynamic and comfortable porn performer, someone you could see in another type of mainstream cinema as she's a wonderful bundle of heightened energy throughout every scene, the most stable rock in terms of character as the matriarch. I like how, whilst there is some drama, this never comes off as scuzzy or fixated on more "edgier" material in porn either, Ovidie in interviews someone who has expressed concern, even as a pro-sex advocate and former performer, to how BDSM ideas like humiliation, spanking and holding an actress' throat mid-coitus have been brought into mainstream porn where adolescents in particular, who'll see it regardless of any attempts of restriction, may be influenced by it. Here there's little in terms of fetishes at all, even the commune whilst the female characters have bisexual relationships with no male-male sex. The exceptions if any are "paizuri", to which I am going to deliberately leave you the reader to investigate baring the fact the term of Japanese erotic slang sounds so much more stylish than the crude English term, and Del Sierra being very resourceful with her feet. If we're going to have to discuss the mechanics of the film, whether it's actually titillating, that's entirely subjective and in itself pointless thing to try to write about as it'll just be descriptions that will not be as worthwhile as just finding the film for yourself.  

You could argue, in honestly, that Ovidie's film comes off as quaint in this era though, which is a surprise in knowledge she is meant to be a controversial figure, something considered "vanilla" nowadays that might've been transgressive in another time. This is from a view of someone, whilst knowing these terms and history, who openly admits to a real lack of knowledge of this medium just in terms of how pornography has always been a lot more difficult to see in the United Kingdom, making anyone who actually wants to study the material rather than use it for its initial purpose significantly more difficult, especially as you're more likely to find compilations of scenes nowadays online or in stores than actual films in this decade. If IMDB is right, this was a TV movie, which if ever proven to be true does express how France (and Europe in general) has always had a more relaxed view on sex, in vast contrast to their greater concerns with violence, to the British and the Americans. I cannot make comments for the Americans, but it's always been embarrassing being English knowing we gave the world the likes of Lady Chatterley's Lover and the art of Aubrey Beardsley, but our authorities have always come off in puritans in vast contrast even to our Carry On sex comedies.

The film itself, back on track, has a matter of fact digital look, bright and full of detail befitting a known Blu-Ray release, which however leaves another paradox. On one hand it's bare in terms of aesthetic, excusing the pun, but fits a film attempting at realism in how it's a film crew filming the everyday life of the commune, even to the point the director's fraught phone conversations with her husband are learnt by the viewer because she accidentally leaves her microphone on after filming. Honestly, the bigger issues are more to the fact the film, even if it's still meant to be porn first, doesn't take a higher risk with its drama or subject. If you're here for the sex like most would be, it's subjective (as already mentioned) what you as an individual viewer are turned on by, but the initial banality is compelling as cinema, especially as there is no censorship when it comes to the sex.

There is bravery to these actors and actresses they can hold even over mainstream performers in that they will have actual sex on camera, the line only crossed with the likes of Shortbus (2006) and a few other films in art cinema history, one of the most basic aspects of human existence in sex something we've had to figure out ways to depict and have also found uncomfortable, for a lack of a better term, to film as it is. There's a banal playfulness to appreciate in this film as well also, just in, to be blunt, a blowjob abruptly beginning in a grassy French field between two friends wearing autumn coats and woolly hats, something in how sexual desire is every day and not a contrived series of cinematic circumstances. The film even takes a risk, when porn is usually meant to build in escalation, in that Chekov's orgy takes place halfway through as a result of a game of Twister, a risk which is the one attempt at more drama I have to admire on a storytelling level as from there is when, halfway through, cracks eventually appear in their group and the pregnancy storyline eventually appears.

The film sadly doesn't have a good enough final act to match this. The ethical and emotional questions of polygamy aren't fully invested into, and Ovidie's character is ultimately a stereotype of a cynical person who resolves to find herself and ditch her work, which you can find a dime a dozen in mainstream cinema. It even ends on a tangent - a rich older man and his much younger bride who has sex with a stud boyfriend for him - rather than anything climatic to forgive the puns again. Yes, this is a review of a porn film, but probably one of the ways we can finally stop the ostracization of our sexuality as a species is to take these films seriously, pluck one out of nowhere as I have, regardless of who I am as a viewer in terms of my own sexuality, and just take a subjective view.

You can have your cake and eat it with this genre if you could pull it off, again with inappropriately sexual choices of wording, with being sexy but also having some mental stimulus, but I was disheartened after the build up of this feminist female porn filmmaker, whilst expecting something more optimistic than Catherine Breillat, that I got something ordinary. That's my fault, presuming something more subversive, bringing my own expectations to the table; aside from this, mind, I'd actually be happy if work was more like this, with a knowledge that as more women are producing and filming porn, hopefully more feature films exist from them and, maybe if more socially acceptable in Britain, it could provide a needed change for the better in our views.