My TS Stepmom

Since taking over much of Transsensual's feature direction from founder Nica Noelle, Dana Vespoli has grown with the genre, and this mature work provides a new approach to casting and presenting trans-females in a respectful light.

The drama of a man struggling with his adversarial new stepmom after his father's death plays quite well without any explicit mention in the script of her gender/presentation status. And remarkably even the requisite XXX sex scenes do not dwell or necessarily focus on the 3 leading ladies possessing male genitals. Sure, the studs in the cast participate in mutual fellatio but that's about it: otherwise the vestigial male packages are irrelevant.

How this plays with TS fans or subscribers to this specialized website remains to be seen, as in the marketplace exploitation and a gonzo approach rules in all genres, whether it be boy/girl, girl/girl, boy/boy or this TS/boy content.

Vespoli tells the story from hero Gabriel Dallessandro's point of view: he's estranged from his dad but beside himself at the man's death as everything will be divided between him and daddy's young new wife, who he's never met. Dana makes her usual cameo as the lawyer handling the estate, and relations between the two survivors are quite oool at the outset.

Stepmom's behavior is suspect (as we see things through Gabriel's eyes), with him catching her humping some guy (D. Arclyte, like Dallessandro a veteran of this genre) soon after the funeral, and later on he sees Arclyte again in his father's mention having sex with another woman (Alisia Rae), a different form of desecration. Completing the cast is Gabriel's girl friend, a striking trans-female Nikki Vicious.

So all the women in this parallel universe are trans-females, and Gabriel's involvement with both Nikki and inevitably his stepmom Natalie Mars is presented as perfectly natural and not coincidental. I especially like Dana's defusing this aspect of the drama, focusing instead on the conflict between the hero and the woman he considers a golddigger, and much in the manner of those classic 1970s movies by Lina Wertmuller, the woman director does not identify with or present the feelings of the female protagonist (or antagonist in context) played usually by the inimitable Mariangela Melato, but rather identifies for the viewer the hero as prime mover, in the form of her amanuensis Giancarlo Giannini.

Mars is impressive in the title role, glamorous, severely styled and both feminine and flat-chested. She and the other actresses are not the genre's big breasted/big packages fantasy ladies for male viewers but rather character actresses, giving this film some depth compared to the gonzo crap it's competing with to attract eyeballs in today's streaming world.

I like to compare Adult Cinema with relevant mainstream movies, rather than ghetto-ize it as most fans do, and watched a remarkable Sally Potter movie "The Party" soon after this one. I have followed Potter throughout her career and she is hardly mainstream, but rather a critical feminist filmmaker working in what used to be known as Art House Cinema, back when art theaters were in vogue. "The Party" casts an interesting contrast in perspective to Vespoli's work in several key respects.

Vespoli uses to great and concise effect the classic porn shooting location, the "Immoral Proposal" mansion, newly remodeled with white on white decor surrounding its iconic spiral staircase. She has a great shot of the interior unfurnished with boxes packed as it's planned to be sold by Gabriel, setting up further conflict as Natalie wants to retain it and live there as part of her legacy from the estate.

Potter had a home built in the studio for "The Party" at the last minute (just 2 weeks before shooting commenced) rather than using a practical location for the house, detailed in a fascinating short subject on her DVD. The care that went into its construction plus Sally's decision to present her film in black & white reminded me of how Adult Cinema used to be often shot on crummy studio sets, very artificial looking, but now has a fake glamour (especially in gonzo shoots but Transsensual and other Mile High Media story films as well) of lavish mansion settings. i like to think of these mansions as representing the ill-gotten gains of porn producers, say Jules Jordan for example, but even as just oft-rented sites iike the "Immoral Proposal" mansion they provide fascinating fodder for future historians of both the Adult genre and folkways of our culture.

I recommend "The Party" to Dana as useful viewing, as it offers much material for her to consider adapting to XXX context, in keeping with her similar minimalist approach to story and zeroing in on the essentials of personalities in conflict and the complexities of gender relations in the 21st Century. In my theory of the continuum that makes up the Entertainment industry, Vespoli and Potter are kindred adventurous spirits, if hardly bedfellows.