Since I am categorically an opponent of porn's ongoing "parody" movement, I approached "Diary of Love" with apprehension, acquiring it in a 4-pack purchase of Smash features. But I was pleasantly surprised by the honest-to-goodness craftsmanship and sincerity of Jim Powers's film, and even more impressed with the significant issues it raises about the future of the industry.
Here we have, on paper, a Cliff's Notes re-do of a mainstream hit, the prototypical Nicholas Sparks weepie. The character names are retained, scenes scrupulously copied, and the main changes of the framing story in the hospital as well as the time-frame and matched protagonists in both flashback & current footage represent possible improvements on the original.
So the fact that the result is deeply felt and moving, a rarity in modern porn, cancels out the overwhelming rip-off factor. Or does it?
This is the conundrum I was faced with as Powers ends the picture on a high note if you like this genre, or merely a soggy cliché if you're in the legion of Sparks haters and soap opera dislkers. I don't like the Sparks genre in general, and so I was torn - is my bias in favor of uncensored XXX content overwhelming my disinclination to give points for honest sentiment? Is the treacly sentimentality of this material a damning factor?
This remains an open issue, and more significantly, "Diary of Love" with its 30 to 40% non-sex content (story & character development) is at odds with the rest of modern porn. Even story-line videos nowadays still give 90% or even more of the running time over to relatively generic XXX sex footage. Smash Pictures has a bonus option of watching the movie WITHOUT the story footage for the audience that only wants to see f*cking, but releasing such a throwback is still a daring move.
Presley Hart is so fresh and believable as the heroine that rather than merely saying she should be in mainstream roles I would contend that she's better than the actresses currently inhabiting them. If it were not for the stigma against porn, which relegates crossover actresses to either horror films or terrible Wynorski level cable TV soft-X assignments, she should be a SAG star in film after film.
Calhoun, whose character from Sparks land is also named Calhoun, is less successful, as he repeats so many of the mannerisms and "couldn't care less" acting we've seen in dozens of porn features. Johnny Castle as the other man is surprisingly effective acting with something besides just his dick for a change, and it was something of a thrill to see '80s superstar beauty Nikki Charm all growed up as the mother -her acting stiff at first but getting better as the film went on and positively moving in her big scene near the end.
Though the film's green screen and lousy indoor set for an early amusement park scene were laughable, its production values picked up thereafter and provided some excellent set pieces such as the ride in the motor boat and the climactic love in the rain sequence. Lily Labeau in a supporting sex role brings sensitivity and realism to her lovemaking, and overall Powers has made a highly derivative but heartfelt work that he can be proud of. And as I'm currently rummaging through Adult features from yesteryear, I am highly doubtful we will be seeing new releases as narrative oriented as this one. The closest I've observed is the new Italian movie "Donna Matilde", but even that one chooses to err on the side of sex over story.
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