Time: 1:15, Director: Erika Lust, Date: 2011
Screenshots: On our Tumblr
On the web: Official Site, IAFD, Porn Valley Vantage
Cast: Toni Fontana, Sofia Prada (23yo), Saskia Condal, Mario Mentrup, Lady Diamond, Matisse, Liandra Dahl, Didac Duran, and Samia Duarte (24yo)
Source: 1920×1080 MP4 downloaded from Lust Cinema
Review
So sayeth the blurb: "Cabaret Desire is a new indie adult film set in a night of erotic readings. In a magic and bohemian place where people go after dark to hear erotic tales, dancers, musicians and poets create a sensual atmosphere. Cabaret Desire is a journey through four tales of intimacy, love, passion and sex."
The movie consists of four stories told by the story-tellers at the club to patrons. It ends, amusingly and ironically, with a song about female subjugation and its relation to sexuality.
The film won the 2012 Feminist Porn Award for Movie of the Year. We thoroughly enjoyed it, and there is much to admire about it. The camera work is fantastic, and the film is wonderfully conceived. The various stories have amusing twists, and they are well told, both by the narrators and by the filmmaker. We were split on what our favorite scene was. One of us liked the last one best, because of how the story shifts between past and present, but the other of us found the two characters a bit whiny, whereas the first of us thought they were just nervous. The other of us liked the second story best and found the woman's dominance hot. But all four of the stories are sexy, well told, and beautifully shot.
Note that the timings reflect how long the explicit sex lasts.
Scene 1: Toni Fontana, Sofia Prada, and Saskia Condal (♀♂)
Time: 14:00
Features: Strap On
A woman who works at the club sits down and reads a story about why she doesn't care for labels to a woman who is visiting for the first time. The story concerns the relationships that the narrator, played by Sofia Prada, has with two people named "Alex", a man and a woman, though neither of them knows about the other. The scene flips back and forth between scenes of her having sex with the two of them. Ultimately, they force her to choose, and she gets a greyhound, which she names "Alex".
A really great story, with lovely touches of irony. The sex that is shown is passionate, as well, and beautifully shot.
Scene 2: Mario Mentrup and Lady Diamond (♀♂)
Time: 9:00
Cumshot: Internal
Features: Bondage
This story concerns the narrator's "libertine" single mother who also happens to be an art thief. And who seduces men who have what she wants. The core of the story concerns her entry into the home of an author she particularly admires, who she finds asleep in boxer shorts, then gags and ties to a chair before having her way with him. It turns out that...no, that would spoil it, wouldn't it?
Here again, the story is very good, and well told, and the sex is interesting and unexpected, as she dominates him.
Scene 3: Matisse and Liandra Dahl (♀♂)
Time: 9:00
The third scene revolves around a woman's loss of her "white picket fence" fantasies and the "mischief" that surrounds her thirtieth birthday. Her friends' gift to her is nothing but a phone number, which leads to a motorcycle and a blindfold, and a ride to a secret hideaway. Eventually, she finds Matisse, "the only man sexy enough to paralyse me", she says, whom she has been admiring for some time.
The sex itself is fairly brief, but it's passionate and hot, nonetheless.
Scene 4: Didac Duran and Samia Duarte (♀♂)
Time: 9:00
This scene involves a couple who are planning to meet up a year after they have had an intensely sexual, few-day affair. It mixes the present, as she waits for him in a bar and he struggles to get there, with memories of their earlier encounter, and ends with them finding each other again.
It is hard to describe how great this scene is. It's porn, no doubt, because of how explicit it is, but the sex is so well integrated into the story that one almost doesn't focus on it. It's their relationship, their memories, and their hopes that matter here. That said, one of us found the characters a bit whiny, but the other of us thought that just reflected how nervous they were about meeting again—and so how much they had invested in it, despite not having seen each other for a year.
