Afer watching filmmaker Peter Balakoff ego-trip his way through THE PSYCHIATRIST I was well prepared for his bloated ONE PAGE OF LOVE. He's back, as an unscrupulous psychiatrist again, but at least the sex scenes are stimulating.
This Belgian director/"actor" seems to have had a screw loose, judging from the idiotic narrative line of this way-overboard 90-minute XXX effort. Premise is quite simple -a retarded beauty Manon (Gena Lee, also the star of THE PSYCHIATRIST) cared for by her younger sister Suzette (perennially underage-looking cult star Nancy Hoffman) and exploited by men due to her naive nymphomania.
But Balakoff has a habit of presenting the dramatic setup portion of a scene and then arbitrarily (reminded me of sportscaster Warner Wolf's tag-line: "let's go to the videotape") cutting to hardcore sex at the payoff. It doesn't matter if the scene's protagonists are mad at each other or fighting -everything leads instantly to sex.
This makes for a repetitive and tiresome movie, where even the most anything-goes viewer is apt to become impatient with Sneaky Pete's m.o. Saving grace, of course, is casting the quite beautiful and always sexually alluring Hoffman and Lee in the leads, but one could easily imagine a competent director coming up with an infinitely better vehicle for them. Unfortunately for her, Lee worked exclusively for Balakoff, while Hoffman made an indelible niche performing in jail-bait assignments for Bob Chinn, Kirdy Stevens, Stu Segall and Joanna Williams, among others.
Robert Bullock works overtime as the male lead, humping and ejaculating with admirable efficiency. Balakoff tends to keep his sex scenes short and concise (especially by 21st Century standards), but the repetition factor isn't helped by frequent re-use of generic XXX tight closeups over & over as padding.
SPOILER ALERT:
Under hypnosis by shrink Balakoff, Manon reveals that she and young sis, too were raped by her daddy, with this incest subplot leading to his guilt-ridden suicide, and her traumatic arrested development. Film's beyond-cynical ending is one of the worst I've seen lately (and that's saying a lot): Bullock wandering around in a daze after he catches Manon being humped by the auteur/shrink.
With a very boring disco sequence (I pitied the many extras as dancers who were paid some pittance for non-sex roles in a porn movie) and almost as dull orgy, ONE PAGE OF LOVE strays from its soap opera drama for no particular reason. A master, say Anthony Spinelli, could have focused on the central drama and created a hothouse chamber work of some merit. But Balakoff blows it.
This Belgian director/"actor" seems to have had a screw loose, judging from the idiotic narrative line of this way-overboard 90-minute XXX effort. Premise is quite simple -a retarded beauty Manon (Gena Lee, also the star of THE PSYCHIATRIST) cared for by her younger sister Suzette (perennially underage-looking cult star Nancy Hoffman) and exploited by men due to her naive nymphomania.
But Balakoff has a habit of presenting the dramatic setup portion of a scene and then arbitrarily (reminded me of sportscaster Warner Wolf's tag-line: "let's go to the videotape") cutting to hardcore sex at the payoff. It doesn't matter if the scene's protagonists are mad at each other or fighting -everything leads instantly to sex.
This makes for a repetitive and tiresome movie, where even the most anything-goes viewer is apt to become impatient with Sneaky Pete's m.o. Saving grace, of course, is casting the quite beautiful and always sexually alluring Hoffman and Lee in the leads, but one could easily imagine a competent director coming up with an infinitely better vehicle for them. Unfortunately for her, Lee worked exclusively for Balakoff, while Hoffman made an indelible niche performing in jail-bait assignments for Bob Chinn, Kirdy Stevens, Stu Segall and Joanna Williams, among others.
Robert Bullock works overtime as the male lead, humping and ejaculating with admirable efficiency. Balakoff tends to keep his sex scenes short and concise (especially by 21st Century standards), but the repetition factor isn't helped by frequent re-use of generic XXX tight closeups over & over as padding.
SPOILER ALERT:
Under hypnosis by shrink Balakoff, Manon reveals that she and young sis, too were raped by her daddy, with this incest subplot leading to his guilt-ridden suicide, and her traumatic arrested development. Film's beyond-cynical ending is one of the worst I've seen lately (and that's saying a lot): Bullock wandering around in a daze after he catches Manon being humped by the auteur/shrink.
With a very boring disco sequence (I pitied the many extras as dancers who were paid some pittance for non-sex roles in a porn movie) and almost as dull orgy, ONE PAGE OF LOVE strays from its soap opera drama for no particular reason. A master, say Anthony Spinelli, could have focused on the central drama and created a hothouse chamber work of some merit. But Balakoff blows it.