To its credit, About Cherry avoids the involving but predictable and shrill moralizing of old-school, girl-run-amok pictures such as Paul Schraeder's Hardcore (1979) and Bob Fosse's Star 80 (1983). The film doesn't rule out the possibility that exotic sex, exhibitionism, and voyeurism can be, of all things, fun, even as the story normalizes the new porn industrial complex's bureaucracy, complete with paperwork-laden hiring interviews, crabby java-slurping directors, and producers trying to boost productivity. Never mind the naughty nurse and dominatrix-cop setups of Cherry's scenes—one can almost imagine Steve Carrel as a buffoon version of Kink.com's founder Peter Acworth in a TV sitcom called Deep Office.
But for all its contemporary revelatory pretensions, About Cherry stumbles over the time-honored tripwires of a gawky plot and tired performances, as though porn-acting standards had lowered the indie high bar instead of being elevated by it. The same holds true for the writing, which sounds like it should be part of a bad porn setup even when it's part of the framing story:
Angelina: [eats some fruit the morning after a night of lovemaking] This is amazing.
Margaret: Yeah, I got it at the farmer's market. You should come with me sometime. It's so fun.
Angelina: Mm, I like it when you pick the fruit. You always pick better fruit than I do.
Margaret: [Adoring, then knowing, gaze] It's true. [The two of them giggle together girlishly.]
Cherry's not sure whether it wants to be a keyhole peep into a forbidden world, a warning tale about a vulnerable ingénue, a bildungsroman, or yet another verité-ish expose about an America gone to seed. If it is intended to shock in its casual frankness, it's too late to the game. Any naïve parent who has tried, say, to Google the lyrics to the children's song "Little Brown Jug" has no doubt come away from their laptop with an eyeful surpassing anything Elliott, dressing his X up as R, will show you here.
There are hints of camp and desensitizing insider snark—more than a soupcon of Showgirls (1995) in the Bod dressing-room banter. But if sly irony is intended, the characters are neither cartoonish enough nor the stakes high enough (Will she make $800 in a day if she signs on to a boy-girl flick? Will she? Will she?), for that to be sustained either.
So how did a film so intent on being eye-opening get so drab and snoozy? There are, after all, new aspects of the porn world to be considered. In a Huffington Post interview in April, responding particularly to a group called War on Illegal Pornography, director and co-scripter Elliott pushed his talking points regarding sexual identity politics and porn as enlightenment.
"I am a former sex worker, so arguments like the one this group is making are very personal to me. When you talk about S&M promoting rape and abuse, that is a direct assault on my sexuality. ....
"But more importantly, Kink is extremely respectful of its workers, more so than most pornography companies. There are women directors, workers get benefits and, even though it doesn't look like it on camera, boundaries are openly discussed and never, ever pushed at Kink. The thing about porn is it's very empowering. You set all of the rules and the rules are absolutely followed. You say, 'this is what you can and cannot do to my body.' That is a very powerful thing."
While the articulate Elliott may be more persuasive than, for instance, Larry Flynt, the film downplays the S&M angles of Kink.com. Beyond a couple vague conversational references to playing "top" or "bottom," scripters Elliott and Lee don't go there. And in a year when the Fifty Shades trilogy tops the best-seller list, Cherry's Bod experiences won't strike viewers as terribly outlandish. The roughest sex we witness is non-Bod, between Graham and her estranged realty-broker lover, and even that encounter is mostly in tasteful silhouette and far less interesting than their apartment's fabulous view.
