Zazel (1 DVD Release) Review

Reviewed by DeathIncarnate  on  1/28/2001

Directed, photographed, designed (etc.) by Philip Mond

Starring Sasha Vinni, Lene Hefner, Anna Romeo, Gina LaMarca, Nikki St. Gilles, et al. (4 Penthouse Pets of the Year)

Running time : 126 minutes

Review :

I had pretty high expectations for ZAZEL even though I didn't see it until some years after its release.. the 7 AVN awards it won, most of them for technical or artistic categories and the high praise of some of the industry magazines made the buy pretty much of a lock-off.

I'm always very fond of the Michale Ninn mold of film making (though to be fair we should mention the ubiquitous Andrew Blake as well since he was the first on the block) and this picture was one of the highest-budgeted films of all time with body-painting, lush exteroirs and sets, shot-on- 35mm-look and last (but not least, as they say) the renowned photographer Philip Mond at the helm, whose work is definitely a cut above the Bud Lees and Scotty Foxs of this world...

Of course, the story is crap (Blake can't do it any better, and Mond's obviosuly not interested in narrative so give him a break here), about the scent of love as put together by ultra-gorgeous Sasha Vinni who plays a perfume designer. The high point of the film are therfore not the pretentious voice-overs by Ms. Vinni (even Simon Delo in Ninn's SEX is restrained in comparison) but the admittedly very imaginative sex scenes, oops "erotic fantasies".

I won't explicitly detail everythign here, because this has already been done enough times (for a really exhaustive account, please read Roger Pipe's review) but pick out the best and worst parts of the movie :

I must starin that the body-paint was very tasteful and artistic without being silly (actually, THE CELL reminded me of ZAZEL), as evidenced by the first scene where Sasha is completely painted in blue with a golden crown and her red tongue sticking out. Mond plays with colours here and it looks great (Vinni is supposed to be the god Shiva here) but after a few minutes we begin to see the problem with the movie.. everything is dragged out ad nauseam and even though I never do that the first time I watch I film I've actually bought, I fast- forwarded through a lot of it because minutes and minutes of Vinni just standing in the water (beatufil as she and the setting may be) and flicking her tongue is just ridiculous... the brief cunnilingus at the end (between her and Lene Hefner) doesn't warm thing s up at all.

"And so it goes, everlasting" (anyone remember what movie this is from ? OK it was Jamie Gillis in FOREVER NIGHT) for almost every scene : good ideas, good execution but mind- (or rather ass-) numbingly extensive scenes, unrestrained by any sense of pace or rythm. Mond may be great behind the camera, but when it comes to editing the movie, he doesn't know when to stop or how long to drag something out before it becomes boring (to be fair, it was director James Avalon at the editing bay here, which makes me wonder though). To me this movie was (as Roger Pipe said) a great photo-album stretched out to over 2 hours... as a short film or a heavily cut soft version (75 minutes, I believe) this would have worked, but as a feature film it's far too repetitive. Of course, this was Mond's first 'real' movie after vignette type Penthouse shoots, but still...

Another good example is the wonderful 'Angel' sequence which becomes catastrophic after the 5 minute mark with uninspired close-ups thrown in, strangely un-consistant lighting and the music changing without any visual cue (this is another problem). The only scenes where Mond had everything figured out was the black& white boy/girl scene halfway through (good timing and great cutting between different positions) and the 'tiger' scene with Vinni painted all up and bobbing up and down on an unidentified cock (though it was probably a body double for Ms. precious) which makes for a nice visual effect even though it has zero heat..

That's another problem : if you have no story, a sluggish pace and pretty-yet-boring women in your film you might just as well try to have some pretty hot sex in it! However as good as no scene is passionate or even very erotic, they are all sacrificed on the altar of art except the mentioned b&w scene and maybe the last sequence with Anna Romeo who plays the devil and is a real hottie. She's the only one who does anal and DP in her scene, even though I'm not a fan of those things it did lighten the movie up a bit. Except for THAT fire effect everybody's been talking about of course!

So, what am I supposed to say about the film, I didn't really give it a bad point average (3 / 5) because I liked the idea.. having seen enough of those run-of-the-mill porn flicks who are just as boring as this one, but this time because of the total ineptitude of everyone involved (which was clearly not the case here) I applaud Mond for trying to bring art into the porn world.. I hope he gets luckier next time in making a feature film that combines his talents as a photographer/art director with the necessary narrative elements and pace.

The DVD :

Metro did a moderately satisfying job here since there are a LOT of trailers for other movies (and ZAZEL) as well as a photo gallery and scene selection, but no really specific things such as audio commentary etc. since this was an early release I kind of understand that, and for people who like the movie it's probably enough. I mean, it's a long picture, and the audio/video quality is mostly very good (though the color is sometimes inconsistent, probably due to film development) so there you go.

All in all, I was more or less disappointed with ZAZEL but it's not a bad film either.. just a boring one.