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Elektra Luxx (DVD)
Year: 2010
Rating: MA
Director: Sebastian Gutierrez
Cast: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Carla Gugino, Timothy Olyphant
Release Date: August 04, 2011
Distributor: Paramount
The Film: 3.5
FILMINK rates DVDs and Blu-rays out of 5"...sweet, heartfelt, charmingly funny and just raunchy enough..."
While writer/director Sebastian Gutierrez's character piece is ostensibly about the porno industry, it's actually sweet, heartfelt, charmingly funny and just raunchy enough, with a fine indie-cred cast headed by Carla Gugino, evidently tired of all her recent dull roles as upstanding mums and long-suffering wives. Her flesh-flick star Elektra Luxx has given up the business in favour of teaching a sex therapy class in community college, and has also recently discovered that she's pregnant, leading to much soul-searching, a procession of intriguing (and sometimes horny) characters, a selection of strange events and a parallel plotline where her ditzy former colleague and co-star Dolores (Lucy Punch) deals with a surprise lesbian crush.
Playful and joyously rude, but not quite dirty, and with a convincingly porno-esque look (gaudy colours, Vaseline-smeared camera lenses), this features Gugino in her most memorable (and sometimes unclad) role since Sin City, and she wisely doesn't play Elektra as a fool or victim: our heroine is a smart, soulful sort who believes she has a carnally-enlightening mission and truly helps people.
And what people they are: Joseph Gordon-Levitt is amusing as a porn blogger seen disconnected from the main action and referring to Elektra's retirement as ‘epochal'; Timothy Olyphant has a lovely bit (so to speak); Vincent Kartheiser (of Mad Men) is a naked guy in a lift; and quite a big uncredited star turns up in a dream sequence, while Elektra's in the bath pondering what it's all about.
A winning lark for unembarrassed audiences, this is great fun, whether you've seen a porno movie or not (and surely everyone reading this hasn't, of course).
