Possession (Adam & Eve) Review

The gist: This certainly isn't the dumbest feature I've ever seen. That would probably be "Rawhide," the last Nicholas Steele movie I saw. Why did I come back for more? Because Carmen Luvana is beautiful, and I'm still looking for a movie of hers that I'll like. After five or six tries, sadly, I'm still looking. The good news is, this one is bad in ways that are occasionally hilarious.

The plot: It's sort of a "Heaven Can Wait" device. Carmen is doing research on paranormal activity at a cemetery. A ghostly Steven St. Croix shows her how she can relive the fondest memories of the dearly departed from other eras. Luckily for us, they think about fucking a lot. They don't call it a boneyard for nothing (rim shot).

The play-by-play: We start with Nevaeh Ashton and Cheyne Collins at a picnic at the turn of the century, with appropriate costumes. Wow, the dialogue is insufferably bad, even by porn standards, and Cheyne is trying out some horrible goofball accent. They pour some tea, and ... my god, they're using tea bags. It's 1900, and they're drinking their tea with the anachronistic tea bags still in the cups, with the little paper tags hanging out. At least the scene crackles along while they sip their tea and trade banter like: "Good." "Very, very good." "Yes." I found myself making that circular "Come on, let's go" gesture at the screen.

Anyway, Cheyne proposes, Nevaeh accepts, and they seal their new commitment with the traditional oral sex. Pretty soon he's riding his darling betrothed doggie. She keeps her feathered flapper headdress and stockings on through a quick spoon, and the pop goes on her belly to end a scene that mostly begs for FF.

Next, we find Julian as a French concert pianist in 1922 (great casting!) and Natalia Wood as his wife and inspiration. There's absolutely no reason to make these characters French. Not doing so would have averted the unintended humor of Natalia saying, "What is wrong, cherie?" without even the slightest attempt at an accent. Some lovey-dovey dialogue sends them from the piano to the bedroom, but halfway up the stairs they just go for it, and I can't wait to see the virtuoso show off his tattoos. Alas, he keeps his shirt and vest on all the way through the oral, some standing doggie that contains a lot of non-hardcore shots, and reverse cowgirl. There's a lot of slow-mo bouncing in this position that looks kind of nice, and then Julian adds to the string of pearls around Natalia's neck.

For some reason, Carmen enters the next scene in her own body, instead of inhabiting someone else's. I suppose the reason is that we don't want to wait until the end of the movie to get Carmen naked, but is that really a reason to throw out the central premise of the movie? You can make your own judgment on that. From the bad music and Carmen's one-piece swimsuit, I'm guessing we're supposed to be somewhere in the Fifties. Carmen joins Olivia Del Rio to double-team Joey Ray poolside. The BJ is nice, with good interaction between Carmen and Olivia as they take turns. They take turns on top of Joey, too, with Carmen doing the honors in reverse cowgirl and Olivia in cowgirl. When Olivia is riding Joey, Carmen isn't afraid to get her nose and tongue between Olivia's cheeks, which is great. The pop goes on the butt, and Carmen finishes up by tasting the dick and then a bit of the splash on Olivia's ass. Not a bad scene.

Now we're in the Civil War era. Amber Rain is dozing on a bed strewn with rose petals for that romance-novel look. Evan Stone is returning from war to his beloved. Aww, they missed each other, and he's eager to taste what has to be the prettiest shaved coochie of the 1860s. And now here's something I really like: She gives him the blowjob while still wearing her big frilly gown, which is quite lovely. Holy shit, Evan just flailed his hand over the table by the bed, landing in the fruit bowl, and they didn't edit out the "clack!" of the plastic fruit. That's fucking priceless. The cowgirl and mish go pretty uneventfully, and there's a pop to the belly.

St. Croix has his flashback, where he and Dominica Leoni zip through some really bad dialogue and teasing foreplay over a pool table. After Leoni sinks one, we actually transition to the sex with the line, "You win a prize. It's in my pants." Anyway, after the oral warmups, we go straight to anal in doggie, then mish, then another belly pop.

For the final pairing of Carmen and Evan, we're in some sort of faux-tropical setting at an outdoor bar, so they climb aboard for some 69. Carmen looks great when she starts riding him cowgirl, and they sort of rotate into a seated scissor position for a while, before it turns into mish. There are plenty of good full-length shots with the entire bar in frame that are very effective. They hop off the bar and bend Carmen over for some vigorous standing doggie, and I like the shots of her grabbing the rail. Evan ends up glazing Carmen's butt in easily the best scene of the movie. Abruptly, we get a "The End" title card.

Condom rundown: Yes in Julian and Evan Stone's scenes, no in the others.

Pros: For a couples movie, you have five sex scenes that involve characters that are couples with pre-existing relationships, instead of the usual porn promiscuity. There is an effort in three of them to really amp up the romance. That's got to be a bonus for someone.

There is some visual style here. The pace of the sex is relaxed, and the camera glides around slowly for that "nice" couples feel, as opposed to the "urgent" feel. A lot of shots are framed and set up well. It's pretty.

It's shot in high-def widescreen. I don't exactly have a reference-standard setup here, but it looks good to me, and I appreciate the effort in principle.

Cons: Maybe I shouldn't, but the fact is I do pay attention to the plot. When it doesn't make sense, it bugs me. It's not just that I insist on making an issue of it -- the writing is so haphazard that it calls attention to itself. Stone and St. Croix are revealed to be the same character, but it's not explained. The setup for the final scene is also abrupt and insufficient. A little help here, please.

The sound during the sex scenes is weighted heavily toward the music, which is pretty Muzak-ish, by and large. The exceptions are a passable jazz song over the beginning and end credits and a reasonable lite-FM jazz ditty in the St. Croix-Leoni scene.

I might be wrong, but it felt like there was some looped sex footage in a couple of scenes. It wasn't done as badly or obviously or often as you saw in early-90s movies, but I seemed to detect a whiff of it.

DVD extras: There is a 24-minute a behind-the-scenes segment that could have been cut down to five or six pretty easily. It mainly consists of photo shoots and sex set to music, but there are a few nuggets from brief interview segments, and fortunately the main one is with Carmen. She admits that she doesn't really understand the plot either, but "it's only the second day." There are two bonus scenes, one with Ava Vincent and Kurt Lockwood from Dirty Dancers, and one with Venus and Tyler Wood from Under the Influence.

Summing up: It's a couples feature with appropriately vanilla sex. I don't mind that. There are things to like here, but the typical porno-type failures -- bad plotting and dialogue, not enough attention to detail, lame music -- are severe enough to undermine the credibility of what could have been a decent movie.

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