Inside Myself

When you're a big-name, award-winning (despite the dubiousness of the bodies issuing those awards) stylist like Michael Ninn I guess it's impossible to leave well-enough alone. For INSIDE MYSELF he delivers very, very sexy vignettes revolving around gorgeous porn star Anais, but insists on bookending the footage with annoying (and repetitious) obscene-phone caller "plot", failing to turn his porn into a thriller.

Another drawback is his penchant for annoying music-video effects, distorting the visuals with hyper-edited shock montages. All the upcoming sex sequences are telegraphed via confusing (and pointless) flash-forwards in this fashion. One has to grit one's teeth and put up with Ninn's nonsense, to settle down to solid masturbation material once he gets the "look at me, I'm a big-time director" kinks out of his system.

The five sex scenes lead off with Anais giving a big-dicked Siffredi type a fantastic blow job. This is very well-photographed, and Ninn indulges himself for an extended ejaculation payoff that runs two minutes long, thanks to repeating footage, different angles and other chicanery. I guess he was swinging for the fences -hoping for another "Best Oral Sex Scene" award.

The other sequences feature plenty of fetish and bondage content, with a guy in a masochistic mask, some light whipping and plenty of patent leather. Apart from Anais, Nikita Denise steals the spotlight with an enthusiastic d.p. sequence.

It's all staged with a harsh, industrial look to the backgrounds which reminded me (unfavorably) of some similarly pretentious videos by Alexander DeVoe shot in the same time frame for his interracial SEX SHOOTER series. If your a fan or apologist you might say great minds think alike, but I think both auteurs were equally guilty of misplaced pretentiousness.

Bottom line is this video would have played better without the frills. Anais reads her dialog listlessly in the opening phone call scene wherein a creep tries to dominate her, representing her "conscience"; he shows up in the flesh for a final sequence notable only for Anais' attractive pink high heels (take that, Zalman King!). Ninn replays the boring phone conversation at the end of the film -it comes off as padding rather than significance.