Firstly, there's something just horrible about this video. I've put that at the end, which you can skip down to read, or you can read this as I've written it, just as I discovered it.
So, first off, Vixen, the original site in the ultra-high quality network started by Greg Lansky. It's hard to separate it from the sister studios - Blacked, Tushy and their Raw cousins but it's worthwhile, I think because Vixen best embodies what Lansky was trying to do with porn, without taking on board the racial baggage which the siblings piled on top.
I like Vixen. It takes itself and what it does seriously. There's always an effort to put some kind of scenario together, and while it's usually pretty basic, occasionally the scenario gets a lot of time, even dialog and - whisper it - acting. At the very least, there was a director with an idea for what they were trying to film, beyond just people fucking.
More importantly, these films have had lots of money thrown at them, and a lot of that money has been spent on making the actors look as good as possible. Clothes, hair, makeup, lighting and sets are always high end and put together by professionals. Often, there's a glamorous location. I couldn't care less if the scene was filmed in Monaco or St Kitts but I don't begrudge the performers and crew their holiday. I do care about makeup and hair. As I often point out, I'm watching porn to see an idealised fantasy. It's perfectly fine if the performer looks like the girl next door, but she should look like the girl next door after she's had an incredible makeover.
In this movie - and it's over an hour long - so I think that makes it a movie. the setup is that our heroine, Olivia really fancies someone else's husband. She invites him over and then invites him to fuck her. He grins and says she's a bad girl and might need a spanking. She seems to like that idea. Her eyes sparkle with naughty ideas. She agrees and he suggests he spanks her. She drapes herself over him. He spanks her. She loves it. They fuck, with more spanking along the way. That's almost John Le Carré levels of plot compared to most porn, and it gives the actors something to work with, something sexy to say, beyond just moaning and swearing.
So, a side-bar about spanking. Like a lot of things in porn, I think it's great when it's almost incidental to a hot scene. But actual dedicated spanking videos are usually terrible. For a start, like a lot of fetish stuff, they're lower quality, badly lit, poor sound, minimal set, costume, makeup. But they're also incredibly boring. An hour of spanking is fifty nine minutes too long in my view. Plus, they have even less plot than normal porn. 'You've been bold, bend over. Ow. Ow Ow Ow Ow..." Like seriously, who is still watching after two minutes of this?
Anyway, back to our heroine's adventures on Vixen.com. In this, Oliva has been paired with Jean Val Jean, who is French, and I think, a good buddy of Lansky. He was certainly one of the most prolific actors on Vixen and he looks like a male model. I don't mind him, he is after all, the guy in the very best porn video of all time, also from Vixen, when he starred with incomparable Porn Mommy and Trump aficionado, Eva Lovia. See here XXXX.
Val Jean's main problem is that he mumbles. Worse, he mumbles over his partner's dialog. The female star can barely get out a word without him interrupting to dribble out some almost inaudible Gallic encouragement. He's one of those guys who never heard anyone say anything without wanting to give his opinion over the top of it. When Olivia says "I love the way you're f....." we never get to hear exactly what she loves about it, because Val Jean is muttering "Yeah baby" over her sentence. You can barely hear him, but it stomps all over the star's voice. It's my pet peeve, which comes from hours spent trying to isolate her dialog, set it to music and repeat it to make a video. But if I was one of Jean's co-stars, or better yet, the director, I'd be yelling at him to shut the fuck up. I don't want to make it about him being French, but black guys don't do this. Male stars need to be strong and silent, and if they do have something relevant to say, make it clear and snappy, not like an inebriated Charles Aznavour muttering to himself.
Now, Olivia. She looks stunning in all her movies, but in this one, the crew excelled themselves. Her hair, makeup and outfit are just perfect. It's simple. understated and classy, but you can tell that a vast amount of time, effort and money went into making her look her absolute understated and classy best. She wears a pretty summer dress that hugs her curves and she keeps it on for a good third of the movie, which is less than we deserve but a lot more than we usually get.
I've never seen another scene where she looks this good, nor where she seems so happy and comfortable with the scene she's shooting. Her eyes shine. She looks cheeky, then lustful, joyful, anguished and surprised during the whole thing. She really turns it on for the camera and she acts up a storm all the way through. At one point she puts her hair into a ponytail and during those few seconds she looks like an absolute angel. She smiles a lot, especially for a movie where her ass is getting spanked so much. She yelps and squeals and grimaces too but there's always a smile coming soon after. She's acting, and it's very very good and she sells the whole thing very well.
There are two main shots - on a sofa, where Olivia first lays across her guy's lap, and a bed, shot from the side. Apart from those, we get the usual short clips at the start to give some context. Olivia and val Jean texting each other and a great scene of Olivia pulling on her sexy dress before meeting him.
On the sofa and the bed, we get the usual angles and they mix it up well to show Olivia off to her best. There's always at least two cameras and they close up and give those distance, context shots that make it more than just filming people fucking. The sound is clear and sharp and California sunshine is streaming in to help light the whole thing perfectly.
As usual, I feel compelled to write these reviews, because I've spent a long time with the scene editing it into a porn music video. This video was supposed to be lots of models from Vixen and others of their brands being spanked. But as with many videos I make, one scene is so good that eventually I decide to ditch everything else and just make the PMV from that one movie. Maybe one day I'll do the multiple actor collage or maybe I'll just leave it at this one.
Now, a short word about Olivia. Maybe you already know she died aged just 20. I didn't know this when I started making this video. And like I say above, I was so impressed with her scene that I went to Vixen.com to leave a comment about how great she was. At the top is a message lamenting her untimely passing. I was shocked. She died of an untreated UTI. She'd struggled with alcohol and other addictions and died alone. I don't know, I'm not sure anyone does, but I have to suspect her porn career almost certainly contributed something to her mental health issues and rapid decline.
Her death is horrible and sad but in my view, she left behind some wonderful work. Maybe she regretted her porn career. Maybe she was proud of the films she made. If she was at all, she must have been proud of this one. I don't know. i did consider abandoning making it, but that just seemed pathetic, so I went on and finished the video. I think it'd be crass to say it's a tribute, but it's certainly a genuine appreciation of her talent.
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