The local sex shop (www.afternoondelight.net if anyone cares), conveniently one block away from my house, offers adult videos for rent. Naturally, the vast majority of the adult videos are of the XXX variety, meaning that nothing is left to the imagination. Softcore videos, slightly more discreet about what they show, exist in this universe, yet try telling that to the store’s customers. Apparently, once people see hardcore, they will never go back -- I asked the owner one time about whether or not softcore existed in this store, and she said that they had to sell most of the films off because nobody was renting them.

A couple (and I do mean a couple) of softcore movies still exist in the video room, however, and I figured I ought to do my part and pay my five bucks to watch 50 percent of the store’s esteemed softcore collection.

The Awakening of Gabriella is a Playboy film from 1999, starring such softcore luminaries as Susan Featherly, Tammie Hannum, and Jeannie Miller. Featherly is a woman who, as the movie begins, discovers her husband having sex with a strange woman, right there inside the gas station that the husband owns (obviously, the place doesn’t get too much business if he figures he can have sex on the countertop). The man gives the usual excuses about how, I love you so much, but it’s not about love, it’s just that this woman is experienced, she knows how to please me, but the woman wisely punches him in the jaw and takes off.

The entire movie has an episodic feel, as the woman has a few interesting experiences. She falls asleep at the wheel, and nearly runs over a guy on the side of the road. The guy is hitchhiking to Hollywood, in hopes of becoming a famous singer. She decides to invite him along, and the two rent an apartment in town (the two look in shock when they enter, asking how they could pay 500 dollars for this. I don’t know... it’s a little better than my apartment!)

Being a Playboy movie, a strip club comes in to play. The man gets a job as a DJ at the club, while the woman is persuaded by one of the dancers to be a dancer herself (watch how Featherly’s character behaves so innocently and unthreatened in a sleazy strip-club environment -- she even applauds after Tammie Hannum’s performance!) Naturally, the boyfriend gets jealous of this development, but the woman reminds him that she has already dealt with someone who’s told her what to do with her life, and, also, that she doesn’t want a monogamous relationship, since that, too, involved an outside force controlling of her life.

Later on, a gorgeous woman (Jeannie Miller) watches the woman dance, and, at the end of the night, offers to hire her to do a private dance for a “friend”. The woman is suspicious about this, but decides to go, anyway. The man is a former executive in the music business, and lives in a big house with a huge garden that he tends to himself. Our heroine dances for this man, while he and his girlfriend have sex. Susan’s character returns to the house the next day, however, because she feels that she was way overpaid for the dance. Our heroine and the man begin to talk, and it’s clear to us, if not to them, that they are going to fall in love, and be together by the end of the picture ---- what? You thought that this story would end otherwise???

Most sexy movies are pretty low on the quality scale to begin with, but The Awakening of Gabriella is mediocre at best. The film is told by flashback, as Susan’s character tells the story to her servant at the rich man’s house. This flashback serves no purpose except as a device -- it’s obvious that this present-day setting is going to be a payoff at the end of the film, and I seriously doubt that the servant doesn’t already know at least half of what our heroine tells her at this point. It would have been much better to just tell the story from beginning to end, I think -- at least ten minutes of the movie is a waste. The script itself has a theme of sorts (Gabriella finds real love, and “finds” herself in the process), and an actual moral (real love involves respecting each other, and a meeting of the souls, and not wanting to control or own the other person), but the story would probably have been much better if it were developed further in, say, a trashy, sexy romance novel, which this story seems to resemble.

Of course, the acting is terrible, but that goes without saying. All that really matters is, is the movie sexy or not? Well, it’s okay. Susan Featherly is a very interesting woman; she’s has dirty-blonde hair, and has a somewhat long nose, and a real body, as opposed to a silicone one. She looks more “average” than most women in these movies, which is a plus in a number of ways -- she isn’t some “ideal” unattainable woman, but a real, ordinary woman. The other women are quite hot in their own way -- Tammie Hannum struts her stuff on the dance floor, and later on with Featherly’s boyfriend, who has had enough of Featherly’s freedom, apparently, and decides to stab her in the back by fooling around. And Jeannie Miller has an exotic beauty, mainly due to her half-Asian features.

There’s a lot of sex scenes, but this is not a “hardcore” film, so you won’t see anything too raw. Naturally, the star of the show has the better scenes, mainly because she’s the character we have to identify with, so we can enjoy along with her, you could say. She does a spirited session on top of the musician guy, she explores sapphic love with Miller’s character poolside at the rich guy’s house, and, of course, she makes love with her Mr. Right near the end of the picture, in the most vigorous lovemaking session in the picture. The sex scenes are kind of fun, of course, because they go far enough to make you think that something could be really going on, but not too far that all the magic is gone. On the sexiness grade, this film isn’t tops, however -- a true “classic” of the genre would be something like Play Time, with Monique Parent and Jennifer Burton, in which the “acting”, so to speak, looked utterly authentic, even though you will probably see a little less in that film than you will in this one.

Why do people go for hardcore once they’ve seen it and never turn back? Probably because you will be convinced that, because you’re seeing everything, then it’s a better product. It’s sort of like, in the “real” movie world, when people say that the more “realistic” and “gritty” and “darker” a film is, the better it actually is. A film about my day would be realistic, but it would be awfully boring. Seven minutes of a penis entering a vagina, in extreme close-up, is an accurate version of a kind of sex, but watching it endlessly can also be tedious. The best movies of all time are, for the most part, more concerned about storytelling, drama, and character than utter “realism”. And the best sexy movies look like more than tapes from security cameras.

Unfortunately, The Awakening of Gabriella isn’t the best sexy movie, it’s not even the best softcore movie ever. If you want steamy sex scenes and a good/bad movie that will give you some laughs, I’d pick Play Time if I were you.

Recommended:
No

Viewing Format: VHS
Video Occasion: Good Date Movie