Carefully avoiding any direct references to President Trump, Dana Vespoli nevertheless delivers a solid riposte to the "great prevaricator" with this very well-made Adult feature. I was especially pleased by her success in balancing not just a political but also several key social themes, all the while making sure the explicit sex scenes were engrossing and arousing, no mean feat.
Brandi Love is well-cast in the title role, a liberal Democrat senator not far in her beliefs from the iconic Robert Redford character of the classic film by this title, but also portraying a closet lesbian. Her lover of 16 years (since law school) Julia Ann is cast as a wheel-chair riding Supreme Court Justice (!!), and among Vespoli's major achievements here is the most realistic and sensitive portrayal of explicit sex involving a paralyzed/handicapped person I've ever seen. Certainly it will stand as a corrective to the entertaining but deeply exploitative content of competing Girlfriends Films' hit "Poor Little Shyla", that Shyla Jennings classic that made fun of poor Shyla in her leg braces as all the lesbians abused and humped her to the delight of the label's loyal fans.
I prefer Sweetheart Video's take on Lesbian Cinema to that of Girlfriends Films for a number of reasons, all of which are on display here. This is a professional production, well-made and well-acted, and at times resembling a mainstream film. Major flub occurs during TV newscasts (with Vespoli herself delivering the voice of the reporter) in which a sex tape scandal involving Brandi has the legend "Explicate Sex Tape" superimposed on screen by Channel 11, when of course it should be spelled explicit with quite a different meaning. Same type of error occurs when the superimposed legend on screen when Brandi appears identifies her nemesis Senator Trip Mathis instead, played by Alec Knight.
PLENTY OF SPOILERS:
Besides lampooning the mendacity and mindlessness of the hard right, embodied by Knight and his adviser/assistant Ken played by avant garde pornographer Brock Doom/Remzi Abed in a key NonSex Role, Vespoli hammers away at her main theme regarding LGBTQ rights. In the film's coda, after Brandi wins the election, she comes out of the closet as promised to lover Julia Ann, and her well-written speech spells out the movie's progressive attitude clearly and concisely. Contrast this with the mishmash approach that went nowhere in Gamma/Girlsway's similar but lousy lesbian feature "The Senator's Speech".
Another innovation by Vespoli is integrating non-lesbian sexual elements into the genre, not achieving the Unified Field Theory applied to porn that I've been awaiting for so many years (i.e., Adult Cinema that integrates boy/girl, girl/girl, boy/boy and Trans sex into a single story) but satisfying in its own way. Knight has a scene with a prostitute very well enacted by Karlie Montana, that results in her masturbating XXX style after teasing him, and has only Alec fondling her rather than "going all the way" as he's usually paid to do.
The set-piece Julia Ann/Brandi love scene is terrific, with both staying in character throughout, and Brandi manipulating Julia's legs into various positions as would be required if she were really paralyzed. Even better is the sex tape threesome, a wonderful and hot-hot match-up of Brandi with Bree Daniels and show-stopping newcomer Uma Jolie, a young actress I hope to see again in quality roles (rather than the gonzo sludge eating up her contemporaries Elsa, Piper, Leah and Keisha) soon.
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