Torn

Do you wonder if there is really such a thing as good porn? Do you wonder if a pornographic movie could tell a story so honest, so compelling, and so powerful that it would move you emotionally, even bring you to tears? Can you imagine a film that so integrated sex into the story that you can hardly imagine the story being told without it? Where the way the sex was shot didn’t make you feel like you were in anatomy class but that brought out its beauty and wonder? There are not many movies like that, but Torn (released in 2012) is one of them.

The script, which is based on a true story, was written by Jacky St James. This was also the first film that St James directed, with Eddie Powell. (St James’s story is an interesting one.) Since then, she has gone on to direct a huge number of films. She has mostly worked for large, mainstream, commercial studios, and some of her work shows that heritage. But her best work is about as good as it gets.

Torn would be followed by a whole series of great films in the “New Sensations Erotic Stories” series. This one was released under the “New Sensations Couples” moniker, but it was the only film so branded. The next was the wonderful Submission of Emma Marx, which would be followed by The Temptation of Eve, The Sexual Liberation of Anna Lee, and then a number of sequels to Emma Marx (commentaries to come),

Torn tells the story of Drew (Steven St Croix), who is going through something of a mid-life crisis. His loves his wife Christine (the amazing India Summer), but their marriage, and his life more generally, has become routine. He meets Mimi (Remy LaCroix) at his co-workers anniversary party; Mimi is her niece. Mimi is half Drew’s age, but the two of them soon begin a torrid affair, and they fall in love. Uh-oh. I won’t tell you how it ends.

There are so many ways this story could go wrong. You can easily imagine how gender stereotypes might make the story not just lamentable but stupid. But not only does the film not fall into that trap—it faces it head-on. Christine is anything but a helpless victim, and Mimi is strong and decisive, refusing to be cast as ‘the other woman’. Indeed, it is when she realizes that that is what she has become that she ends the affair.

The film does have a pretty typical structure for a pornographic feature. There are four explicit sex scenes, each about 15 minutes, in a movie that is just under two hours. So the sex scenes are very much what Linda Williams, on analogy with musicals, calls the ‘numbers’. And, like in musicals, though the sex is integrated into the story, there is more of it than is needed for narrative purposes. In that sense, the sex scenes are very much there to arouse, not just to move the story forward. That, I have often thought, is what makes such films porn.

When I say the sex is integrated into the story, I mean two things. First, the story is told through the sex. And, second, and conversely, the sex makes narrative sense. This is not always true. In many pornographic features, especially the big ‘blockbusters’ that were so common before PornHub made it nearly impossible (financially) to make such films, the sex scenes feel almost completely disconnected from the story.

By contrast, the second sex scene in Torn occurs not long after Drew has kissed Mimi for the first time. He initiates sex with Christine as a way of assuaging his guilt. The two of them remain very much within character during the scene, and the sex is convincingly like the sex that a long-married ‘comfortable’ couple might have. It’s loving and, in its own way, ‘comfortable’, and it tells us quite a lot about how Drew and Christine feel about each other after fifteen years of marriage.

Unsurprisingly, though, the best of the sex scenes features Drew and Mimi. It is hard to put into words just how beautiful it is. Once again, the two of them very much stay in character, and the sex is every bit as loving and passionate as you would expect it to be, given the point in the story at which it occurs.

They spend a lot of time looking intently at each other, and kissing. There is lots and lots of kissing.

And, just as in Eyes of Desire, the way the sex is embedded in the narrative contributes a great deal to the eroticism of the scene. We know what this sexual encounter means to Drew and Mimi, and that makes it much more powerful than it otherwise would be.

The sex is also beautifully photographed. There are not many genital closeups at all (‘meat shots’, as Williams calls them). Rather, the focus tends to be either on their whole bodies, entwined and moving together, or else on their faces. Their focus is entirely on each other, not at all on the camera. (That is true in all the scenes.)

Of course, there are some shots that clearly show the genital action, and the very last shot, just before Drew ejaculates on Mimi’s stomach, is pretty pornish: her body fills the frame, and he is hardly there at all. But that’s very much the exception.

So it’s not a perfect film. But it is a film to which I’ve returned over and over. And every time I watch it, I find myself wondering why I hadn’t watched it again sooner.