Paris Chic (1997) by Andrew Blake - translation review

[Feelvintage]

Hello,

Updating classical movie thread "Paris Chic" by Andrew Blake here, found a vintage long review in French published in 1996.

Planned to translate here before posting.

Here is the French original article by Libération:

https://www.liberation.fr/culture/1996/10/05/les-dessous-chic-d-un-pornographe-andrew-blake-tourne-a-paris-l-un-de-ses-films-x-feminises-et-esthe_184879/

Les dessous chic d'un pornographe. Andrew Blake tourne à Paris l'un de ses films X «féminisés» et «esthétiques». - Libération

The chic underwear of a pornographer. Andrew Blake shoots in Paris one of his "feminized" and "aesthetic" X films.

[Feelvintage]

https://www.liberation.fr/culture/1996/10/05/les-dessous-chic-d-un-pornographe-andrew-blake-tourne-a-paris-l-un-de-ses-films-x-feminises-et-esthe_184879/

The chic underwear of a pornographer. Andrew Blake shoots in Paris one of his "feminized" and "aesthetic" X films.

by Olivier Seguret
published on 5 October 1996 at 23:27

At first glance, nothing looks more like a movie shoot than the shooting of an X movie. Take Bizarre Women, which has just been canned a few days ago in the capital. The interior scenes were all filmed in one of these high-kind Parisian apartments, rented for all types of filming (pubs, clips, films) and which some real estate agencies have made a specialty. It's a huge ground floor recomposed by a fashionable decorator, a dream of a trendy billionaire modern art, with a numbered screen print of Bacon in the bathroom, large informal linen curtains and rag-painted walls.

There, the film crew has taken up residence like any other movie caravan: the vestibule accommodates the boxes of equipment, the kitchen is large enough to group buffet, desk, make-up boxes and wardrobe. The main rooms, finally, are inhabited by the whispers of the crew members who, as on any other film, spend most of their time waiting. But these similarities are misleading. Barbarellas fin de siècle. If the film X that is shot here takes all the appearances of a banal shooting, it is also because the director is not just anyone. His artist name is Andrew Blake and it's also a registered trademark (also, everyone calls him by his real name, Paul).
In recent years and the appearance of his two very striking first films, Hidden Obsessions 1 and 2, Andrew Blake has earned a nice reputation in the land of porn. With his well-combed goatee, his rimmed glasses, his jeans and black polo shirt, he has a fairly typical head of a regal American academic that contrasts sharply with the canons of sex business where human types generally range from recycled mafia style to that of old beauty with bagouzes [(Slang) (Popular) Ring, big ring, signet ring.] through all kinds of mackerel more or less conscious.

Andrew Blake's niche would rather be that of a certain hyperformalist avant-garde, where so-called ass films are bathed in atmospheres that borrow from chic advertising, glamorous clips and female imagery in direct contact with the major categories of naughty illustration: pin-up of the 90s, fin-de-siècle Barbarellas, manga heroines, these are the creatures that likes to invent, fantasize, then stage the intriguing Andrew Blake.

Liberté, her latest opus, is quite characteristic of this vein: one would swear a long clip of Madonna for adults remixed with a sexual Chanel commercial. The film has no dialogue but is full of chromatic and virtual style effects, black and white inserts. The women are captured in poses reminiscent of Helmut Newton. Hyperactive, they are the objective and subjective heroines of situations, men being most often only sexual objects, moles around which women selfishly dispose of their pleasure.

It is obviously in this inversion of codes that Andrew Blake's imprint is best read: where the overwhelming majority of porn films rely on the most crude male identification, Blake claims to shoot feminist X, or, at least, that would be respectful of female desire. He even hopes to seduce women as an audience if we judge by the cover of Liberty, which states: "Finally the X movie that women dreamed of!"

Porn without taboos. Admittedly, all this could be only a pretension, a sleight of hand that is wrapped in a new formula under which it is only a question of continuing to make ass and sell. But there is also a sociological truth under the Andrew Blake case: the distribution of films of a sexual nature has become considerably commonplace in recent years, it is easy to find among the new generations couples who claim to consume them together and without taboos and, in the United States, connections are more and more frequent between the world of X and that of showbiz, especially rock. All this would indicate that the consumption of cinema X is probably on the verge of change and that it is in any case high time to rebalance in their favor the attention that is given to women, whether they are actresses or spectators.

On his set, Andrew Blake reserves the best treatment for his "daughters". The actresses consider themselves well treated, compared to some "French shootings-slaughters folded in one afternoon and not very warm level atmosphere". He directs them with gentleness and concentration, even if it is without particular effusion: Andrew Blake is above all a hard worker and, on top of that, a good technician. "It will be a very fetishistic film, with very beautiful costumes (some, latex, were specially created for the needs of Bizarre Women, editor's note), he explains, in a very sado-maso atmosphere, but without cruelty." In fact, Blake's SM is treated as an anti-realist and highly theatrical convention. The spankings that a beautiful brunette applies to administer to a tall redhead are actually light tapotis, even if they will seem much more slamming after dubbing, in Hollywood with American actresses.

Because most of Andrew Blake's work and therefore of the style, it is in post-production that it springs. No one else spends so much time transplanting the film on video and putting it through all sorts of formalistic hacks. This is also why he films with two cameras, one of which is on his shoulder, which he usually holds himself. He films quickly but rigorously, chaining wide and cutting shots with mechanical safety. A poil clope au bec. [(Familiar) Nude, cigarette in mouth]. Its actresses, Léa Martini, Tanya La Rivière, Eva Falk and Coralie (a little all insect women, Barbie on stilts but pretty, with, standing out, the very actress figure of said Coralie) demonstrate a rather astonishing ease to lug around in the middle of the team, whether they wait for the cigarette in the beak or they officiate under the eye of the master.

"The two things I love the most are women and architecture," says Blake, "and today, as with every film, I try to film these two passions together." One could indeed relate the Blake style to this objective proportion: beautiful plants in sumptuous apartments. That would be to evade its artistic dimension. He clearly does not do this job for money alone or to satisfy an outraged libido. When the stallion on duty, David Perry, arrives, who has come to put an end to the little sapphic games of his colleagues, he can not hold back a smile of contentment as a certain Anita takes him in hand. "No smile anyone," exclaims Blake, "sex is not funny." And he bursts out laughing.

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