Not one of Henri Pachard/Ron Sullivan's best efforts, "The Art of Passion" substitutes pretensions for entertainment, in a poorly directed, unconvincing story of "creative differences".
Krista Lane is a successful erotic novelist, whose publisher Alexa Parks has assigned drunken still photographer John Leslie to illustrate her new book with shots of explicit sex. Krista is very serious about her work and how it should be handled, so she clashes with both Alexa and Leslie, en route to an inevitable, but very clumsily set-up threesome finale.
Many a scene is bungled, as the story and acting suddenly are ignored in favor of rushing to an explcit sex payoff. Leslie's dull, uninvolving portrayal of the drunk amounts to nothing more than an uncharacteristic walk-through, while Parks seems bewildered about what her character's motivation is in each scene.
Of course, Krista surmounts this lousy vehicle with her usual skiil, both acting-wise and in the sack, while other big-name players ranging from Joey Silvera to Billy Dee are given zero-dimensional sex roles.
For the first couple of reels, Pachard casts himself as a janitor/hanger-on at Parks' office, padding the comic relief role with stupid pronouncements about the nature of pornography.
