Catherine Review

Initial Thoughts
I'm currently exploring modern hardcore cinema to see if contemporary explicit films even hold a candle to the older works I love. I've read so much praise about Micheal Ninn that I felt I needed to watch his films. This is the first one I've seen.

The Film
In 1979, a film called Pink Champagne was released to American cinemas. The film was directed by a man who called himself Sven Christian and although devoid of a complex narrative, Christian filled the film with some of the most outstanding visuals ever to appear in a hardcore film. Fifteen years later, an enterprising director named Micheal Ninn began directing for VCA. Now, in the 2000s, Ninn is acclaimed as the most artistic filmmaker working in hardcore.
The cover of Micheal Ninn's 2005 feature, Catherine, evokes thoughts of Mathew Barney's vastly overrated Cremaster Cycle. The film's first ten minutes resemble Barney's epic as well. They also borrow heavily from Eisenstein and Tarkovsky. They are edited like a Chris Cunningham music video and offer some fine visuals. Then it all stops and approximately from the ten to thirty minute mark we are treated to a long, tedious, boring, uninterestingly shot, unimportant, vulgar sex scene.
Then comes another 5 minute music video homage to Tarkovsky, then more unrelated sex. This cycle repeats a few more times and then the movie is over leaving its audience with either a sense of boredom, disappointment, or the feeling that the film was trying to get a hold of something but ended up grabbing only air.
There really isn't much to say about this film because there's very little actual cinema here to talk about. The movie isn't really about anything; sure people yell at each other about punishment and obedience for what seems like an eternity and then randomly break off their arguments for the sake of sex. The photography and editing are both very well done but without any substance, neither can make up for a bad film.
I suppose what most upset me about this film is that despite its lack of substance, it still carries an heir of pretention which is completely unwarranted by the content of the film. I will repeat that Catherine is not technically bad film. I found some of the music video style segments quite compelling but they do not make up for the substandard nature of the rest of the film. If Ninn had cut the sex scenes down to 5 minutes each and expanded the music videos by 3 or so minutes each, he could have had an above average piece of designer internet age art-porn. But the two hour mess presented here is not worth the time.

The Extras
I have the single disk screener edition so no extra features are included. However, a preview of the special features disk is presented on the screener copy. I saw the making of featurette on Ninn's site around a year ago before he took it off. It's pretty interesting.

A/V Quality
The film was shot partially on HDTV and partially on 35mm film. The film segments are much more interesting visually than the video sequences. Both however are presented exceedingly well here.

Cuts Warning
None.

Final Thoughts
A confused film which doesn't know whether it wants to be a music video style art piece or stupid porn.