House of Ass (Adam & Eve) Review

Reviewed by JoeKill  on  3/15/2006

With “House of Ass” Tristan Taormino has accomplished her stated goal handily: she’s created pornography you can enjoy on an intellectual level and will almost certainly spend hours discussing with friends but which can (and will) just as certainly get you off.

What’s so compelling about the film is the way in which Taormino ignores the trend toward exploitative faux “reality porn” wherein guys trick girls into blowing them for money in the backs of vans to create real reality porn. Taormino uses a loose documentary style that takes us back to the vibe of the first season of “The Real World” – when reality TV seemed, for a brief and flickering moment, like it might actually matter.

Like the best documentaries this film draws you into its story, makes you care about its characters (who are, in this case, all attractive enough for a lesser director to simply exploit sexually without context) and, amazingly, actually gets you invested in the sex they have. When Joanna Angel and Mr. Marcus finally have their much-hyped sex scene it isn’t simply about her great tits or the size of his dick. It isn’t just about the taboo of a young porn starlet doing her first interracial scene. In candid interviews with Angel and Marcus Taormino has drawn out of them what interracial sex scenes mean to them, why they’re such a big deal in the porn industry and how they feel about that. So, when they finally get naked, it’s more than gorgeous bodies smacking together. The fact that you actually care about the scene, that somehow these people have become more than two attractive people fucking for money on film – brings the turn-on to a whole other level. The ultimate testament to that? As the rare guy who’s never been particularly excited by lesbian sex scenes I watched the Justine Joli/Sarah Blake scene three times.

Which brings me to the performances themselves. I don’t think I’ve ever seen mainstream porn stars enjoying themselves this much. In the relaxed, sex-positive environment of this weekend getaway there’s a house-party vibe that the performers themselves obviously felt. Everything is real: the friendships, the behind-the-scenes conversations and, most especially, the orgasms. In any genre it takes a great director to create an environment that will allow performers to do their best work. In pornography, as we often hear in interviews with its stars, it’s nearly impossible. Yet Taormino, who has extensive experience organizing non-porn sex parties, managed to put together a shoot that, as many of the stars acknowledge in the film, doesn’t feel at all like work. Consequently they have sex that is by turns kinky, rough, silly, playful, at times even touching and, above all, sexy.

Which is a strange but important point. When was the last time any of us saw mainstream pornography that was this sexy? In an industry that has largely devolved into improbably proportioned people ramming themselves into each other, going further and further to get off a jaded audience who has seen and become bored with virtually everything, Taormino has done something revolutionary. She put a bunch of hot people in a house, let them hang out, get to know each other and have the sex they wanted to have with the people who turned them on…and just kept the cameras running. In the end, when all the fetishes have been exploited and the boundaries broken, what’s sexier than that?

In an era where we’re all getting our pornography online and can with iTunes-like glee even choose the scenes we want, abandoning porn films as whole and cohesive works, I chose to buy this DVD. I want to watch this again. I want to devour the behind-the-scenes bonus material. I want to loan it to friends. It’s the sort of argument for pornography as something more than utilitarian fuel for masturbation that the industry needs – and the recording industry could use too, if they want to save the record album as an art form.

The one disappointment porn fans may feel is that Tristan is conspicuously absent in the actual sex scenes. After her gleeful (and impressive) participation in “The Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Women” and its sequel some may have expected more than the breast-play scene in the special features section, which is as close as the director gets to the on-screen action. But, when you think about it, it makes a lot of sense. This is Taormino’s directorial debut and she’s already pushing the envelope. She doesn’t need the added gimmick of playing porn star in her own productions and, as this film attests, we badly need her behind the camera.

Here’s hoping this is the first of many films by Taormino. It’s hard to imagine her topping this one, but I have the feeling she’s going to try.