I've been watching many, many Nicholas Steele XXX videos lately and they are generally of superior technical quality: excellent photography, musical scores, etc. "Petals", which I discovered in a 2011 British release by Bluebird Films several years after its unheralded debut, lives up to the high standard, but suffers from a very, very weak script.
So I guess Nick has lulled my critical faculties to sleep, as I actually enjoyed it. Title refers to the meager storyline: 3 housewives definitely from Chatsworth begin a flower business, working out of a basement in one of their homes. A fourth wife in their inner circle doesn't join in, and provides just the tiniest bit of conflict (virtually nonexistent) in the pastoral tale. We watch them hump their husbands, and there is some dull banter among both the boys and the girls, but nothing happens. The women eventually catch up with their orders (faxed in, sort of a quaint -now- touch) and by the time the sixth sex scene is over we have "The End" superimposed on the screen.
The cast is handsomely dressed and even the guys like Steven St. Croix and Derrick Pierce come off as square businessmen rather than hip dudes this time out. In an odd way, I wondered whether I was watching some Hallmark or Oxygen channel TV movie for the ladies in a parallel universe where XXX porn was universal, rather than considered dirty. No, this is not satire or even dreaded "parody" (though Steele has directed several of those idiotic ripoffs notably of Bonnie & Clyde and Batman in his day). It's just there is no act three -only a structural equivalent of "closure" in that leading lady Autumn Bliss as Amy ends by humping her hubby Steve, after we've earlier seen her in flashback during happier times in Miami humping first husband Evan Stone. A better-crafted screenplay would have derived some conflict from the divorced lady issue, rather than just using it as an excuse for two sex scenes.
Featuring excellent jazz from Steele's talented composer Lance Erickson and near- perfect visuals from cinematographer John Noz Muka, "Petals" did satisfy me with its sex in a beautiful package approach. Key issue here is that it represents a prototypical example of why storyline porn (especially romantic) has lost the battle with consumers in recent years to gonzo porn - the storyline is so pointless one can forgive the no- nothing attitude that currently declares "Just give me the sex, and leave out the rest".
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