scene title: between heaven & hell
performers: kendra james, serena blair, mona wales
site: girlsway (gamma)
production credits: whitney wright (dir.), enigmacharmer (scr.), zombie (ed.)
release date: february 6, 2020 | trailer
if i'm lagging behind in these reviews, blame the natural ebb and flow of my own interest over time: i can no more stay permanently fixated on pornography than i can on any other of my enthusiasms (thanks, adhd). but also, after quite an interesting january, february has been rather more lackluster, in my inevitably limited and idiosyncratic view.
so one of the first february scenes to demand my interest was this, which i believe is whitney wright's first scene as a director for girlsway proper. (i have no idea, of course, what order she films her projects in; but i think i'm right in saying that this is at least the first one to be published.) and although the scene as i downloaded it gives no script credit (the site notes it was inspired by a member submission), it's fair to assume that the zany comedic tone of the dialogue, although largely improvised by the performers, is whitney through and through.
serena blair, who has apparently recently died and finds herself in a purgatory that bears a close resemblance to a spare room in a porn house mocked up to look like a waiting room, is, as i've already noted in these pages, one of the top comic actors in porn today; but mona wales (who i last saw as an angelically-suffering nun in ricky greenwood's confessions of a sinful nun 2) as a slightly frazzled angel trying to convince her to come to heaven and kendra james (who i last saw as a sadistic teacher in whitney wright's lesbian revenge) as a deliciously cocksure devil tempting her the other way is such superb casting that a network sitcom based on the same premise would be hard-pressed to better it. to wit: there's undoubtedly a bit of the good place in the dna of this scene, which imo is all to the good: more porn in conversation with the broader pop-culture landscape, but not stuck in the stultifying straitjacket of parody, please.
given the premise, i was especially interested to see mona make her case for heaven, since porn so often sides with the devil sight unseen. her theology is expansive and creative, as she insists that sex isn't sinful, it just needs to be reciprocal between loving partners. obviously there wasn't room for a full exegesis of these doctrines, but the hint, drawn out of the improv, that the assumption of heavenly puritanism owes more to hell's propaganda than to divine authoritarianism, totally delighted me as a former theologian.
oh, and the sex was quite good too. it's as awkward as threesomes nearly always are, and of the three i only really believe in serena's competence at lesbian sex, but this scene was so light-hearted and fluffy that genuine intimacy would have been out of place. editor zombie's oversaturated color palette is as ugly as always, making their bodies bright splotches of orange against the pseudo-ethereal white background, and i was surprised to see in the credits that the cameras were operated by three of the top names in the field, because i'd noticed nothing special in the camerawork: except for the very occasional wide shot, it felt like standard girlsway protocol.
but the delightful comedy and quirky fantasy was such a relief from the standard girlsway offerings, which have grown so monotonous in cycling through the same dozen domestic, workplace, or pseudo-teen premises that i skip most of them without a pang, that i'm actually enthusiastic about more girlsway from whitney. i already prefer her work on allherluv over that of missa x, so let's add another site to the pile.
performances: 26
cinematography: 20
editing: 15
script: 12
sjw points: 2
total score:
performers: kendra james, serena blair, mona wales
site: girlsway (gamma)
production credits: whitney wright (dir.), enigmacharmer (scr.), zombie (ed.)
release date: february 6, 2020 | trailer
 |
| l: mona wales, c: serena blair, r: kendra james |
if i'm lagging behind in these reviews, blame the natural ebb and flow of my own interest over time: i can no more stay permanently fixated on pornography than i can on any other of my enthusiasms (thanks, adhd). but also, after quite an interesting january, february has been rather more lackluster, in my inevitably limited and idiosyncratic view.
so one of the first february scenes to demand my interest was this, which i believe is whitney wright's first scene as a director for girlsway proper. (i have no idea, of course, what order she films her projects in; but i think i'm right in saying that this is at least the first one to be published.) and although the scene as i downloaded it gives no script credit (the site notes it was inspired by a member submission), it's fair to assume that the zany comedic tone of the dialogue, although largely improvised by the performers, is whitney through and through.
serena blair, who has apparently recently died and finds herself in a purgatory that bears a close resemblance to a spare room in a porn house mocked up to look like a waiting room, is, as i've already noted in these pages, one of the top comic actors in porn today; but mona wales (who i last saw as an angelically-suffering nun in ricky greenwood's confessions of a sinful nun 2) as a slightly frazzled angel trying to convince her to come to heaven and kendra james (who i last saw as a sadistic teacher in whitney wright's lesbian revenge) as a deliciously cocksure devil tempting her the other way is such superb casting that a network sitcom based on the same premise would be hard-pressed to better it. to wit: there's undoubtedly a bit of the good place in the dna of this scene, which imo is all to the good: more porn in conversation with the broader pop-culture landscape, but not stuck in the stultifying straitjacket of parody, please.
given the premise, i was especially interested to see mona make her case for heaven, since porn so often sides with the devil sight unseen. her theology is expansive and creative, as she insists that sex isn't sinful, it just needs to be reciprocal between loving partners. obviously there wasn't room for a full exegesis of these doctrines, but the hint, drawn out of the improv, that the assumption of heavenly puritanism owes more to hell's propaganda than to divine authoritarianism, totally delighted me as a former theologian.
oh, and the sex was quite good too. it's as awkward as threesomes nearly always are, and of the three i only really believe in serena's competence at lesbian sex, but this scene was so light-hearted and fluffy that genuine intimacy would have been out of place. editor zombie's oversaturated color palette is as ugly as always, making their bodies bright splotches of orange against the pseudo-ethereal white background, and i was surprised to see in the credits that the cameras were operated by three of the top names in the field, because i'd noticed nothing special in the camerawork: except for the very occasional wide shot, it felt like standard girlsway protocol.
but the delightful comedy and quirky fantasy was such a relief from the standard girlsway offerings, which have grown so monotonous in cycling through the same dozen domestic, workplace, or pseudo-teen premises that i skip most of them without a pang, that i'm actually enthusiastic about more girlsway from whitney. i already prefer her work on allherluv over that of missa x, so let's add another site to the pile.
performances: 26
cinematography: 20
editing: 15
script: 12
sjw points: 2
total score: