Confessions of a Lap Dancer (1997)

It is worth knowing that this picture exists in two versions and they are night and day different. Having seen the unrated version on cable, I was very disappointed by the R-rated version widely available on video. Okay, it is not The Godfather. In fact, it's a notch below Dancing at the Blue Iguana. It is basically in the same genre as 100 other Skinemax flix, but distinctly superior in that the approach aims for realistic drama and characters. For once, the sex is not simply exploitation, but part of the everyday reality of the character's lives. They are in the sex business, and Blake Pickett sizzles in her sex scenes, and she and the other strippers look great on and off stage. Herein lies the weakness of the R-rated version. It cuts away almost prudishly whenever clothes start coming off, thereby cutting away from a fundamental fact of the character's lives: that they exhibit themselves and then have to deal with the negative perceptions this initiates. Blake Pickett's best scenes effectively convey her sense of self-loathing at the state of her life while stripping or hooking and most of this is gone from the R-rated version. What remains is a slightly shrieky melodrama in which it is hard to understand why the central character is so self-destructive and hate-filled. In the unrated version this becomes clear and dramatically effective. The R-rated version fails to be either.