Porn expose `The Girl Next Door' is more sad than sexy
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Movie review
XXX 1/2 "The Girl Next Door," a documentary directed by Christine Fugate. 100 minutes. Varsity. No rating; includes full nudity, many sexual situations and graphic surgical procedures.
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Poor Christine Fugate. Had the director's strong, depressing new documentary, "The Girl Next Door," come out a decade ago, it would've made a big splash. That was before pornography became an academic discipline, before "Boogie Nights" filled multiplexes, and before rock groups such as Blink 182 put porn stars on album covers (or in the case of Limp Bizkit's Fred Durst, before band members appeared in a porn movie). Back then, the idea of an in-depth look at the sex industry would have gotten the pundits and talking heads really going. Those were (relatively) innocent times. This summer, "The Girl Next Door" isn't even the only porn documentary out there. ("Sex: The Annabel Chong Story" opened in July.)
The film is so strong, it's almost a shame it has to be lumped together with other porn exposes. For while there is enough nudity in this film to keep a 15-year-old boy entertained for several minutes, it's hardly even a story about pornography. Instead, it is an intimate, raw portrait of a woman who, despite money and fame, has lost at life. The fact she is paid to have sex on camera only adds to the feeling of sadness.
Stacy Valentine is good at what she does. Early in the film, she tells us this - a statement that feels less like a boast than a justification. When it comes to sex, she can do it all. But when asked why she is a porn star, she can't really say. Her abusive ex-husband pushed her to submit nude pictures of herself to a magazine. People liked her look and before she could think about it, Valentine was off for a photo shoot in Mexico and on her way to a lucrative career.
Fugate takes us through the required steps in this story, from childhood (Dad had a temper) through unpopular teenage years to her quaint Los Angeles home, bought with the proceeds from her $1,000-a-day career (up to $2,000 if it gets really kinky). Much of the first half of the movie feels like an obligation, as it moves through numerous movie sets to a creepy industry convention and finally, to the big porn awards in Las Vegas. When Valentine fails to win, she is crushed. It is here where the real story begins.
In Fugate's telling, the porn industry is pretty boring, a sterile thing where stars "work" with one another and AIDS exams are administered like standardized tests. The meat of the story is Valentine's near collapse as a person, brought on not by external factors but something inside.
Two similar images frame the drama. The first is the horror of a lip operation she undergoes on camera, after a graphic breast reduction and liposuction, in which she has her own fat injected into her lips to make them fuller. Afterward, she looks like she's been beaten.
Later, in Cannes for an international porn-awards ceremony, when she is named best newcomer, Valentine sits at her table with her boyfriend, also a film star. Earlier in the day, she had sex with a wealthy fan, a betrayal she tried to justify based on the money he paid her. But at the table that night, with her secret inside, she begins to tremble, her lips moving uncontrollably, a look of guilt and grief on her face. She knows she has destroyed her relationship with the only man who seems to genuinely care about her. She has become a prostitute and her voluptuous lips tell the story.
On the surface, "The Girl Next Door" is an American success story. Valentine rises from housewife to independent star. But it is the price Valentine pays that Fugate is most interested in. Valentine starves herself, surgically alters herself, but still can't like herself.
This tale is a tragedy, a story of human failing. Stacy Valentine is failed by nearly everyone she meets. In the end, despite all she has accomplished, the sadness comes from the understanding that in succeeding, she failed herself.