James Avalon has earned my respect with his anti-gonzo stance over the years, though he's indulged in same on occasion (I'll be reviewing his "Badass School Girls" and "Dirty Little Cheaters" anon), but here he departs from his ongoing day job of directing Couples Romances for Sweet Sinner to indulge in some perilously empty stuff for sister label Erotica X.
The title refers to the currently trendy folkway that was far more popular in the '60s into '70s hippie era. It's a fancy name for open marriage, though visions of Mormon runaway sects' sugarplums dance through my head when I see the term.
Big-name cast members go through a modern "La Ronde" exercise humping each other, with jealousy and other emotions on the back burner. Fans want sex and plenty of it, so Avalon obliges.
Avalon has the same crew as on his Sweet Sinner editions, but doesn't take a script credit for obvious reasons. The point is that with nonviolent, sensual sex scenes in glamorous settings the thinking has become "why bother with a story, with conflict, with drama -just mix and match the sexual performers" to deliver four or five elongated sex vignettes which can stand alone for streaming purposes. It's not gonzo, because the echoes of Max Hardcore do not arise, but it does devolve to generic sex acts.
Ultimately if the market dictates that the last vestige of narrative Adult Entertainment, of which Avalon is a vocal defender, defects to all-sex then it's all over. The participants may still stage their silly awards shows and pretend that they are making movies, but what used to be an interesting adjunct to the mainstream film industry will have become a commodity, recorded sex acts of a documentary nature.
The title refers to the currently trendy folkway that was far more popular in the '60s into '70s hippie era. It's a fancy name for open marriage, though visions of Mormon runaway sects' sugarplums dance through my head when I see the term.
Big-name cast members go through a modern "La Ronde" exercise humping each other, with jealousy and other emotions on the back burner. Fans want sex and plenty of it, so Avalon obliges.
Avalon has the same crew as on his Sweet Sinner editions, but doesn't take a script credit for obvious reasons. The point is that with nonviolent, sensual sex scenes in glamorous settings the thinking has become "why bother with a story, with conflict, with drama -just mix and match the sexual performers" to deliver four or five elongated sex vignettes which can stand alone for streaming purposes. It's not gonzo, because the echoes of Max Hardcore do not arise, but it does devolve to generic sex acts.
Ultimately if the market dictates that the last vestige of narrative Adult Entertainment, of which Avalon is a vocal defender, defects to all-sex then it's all over. The participants may still stage their silly awards shows and pretend that they are making movies, but what used to be an interesting adjunct to the mainstream film industry will have become a commodity, recorded sex acts of a documentary nature.