Review: Porn Theater

Jacques Nolot’s film is an almost nonchalant ethnography of the inner workings of a gay cruising haunt.

Porn Theater
Photo: Strand Releasing

Writer-director Jacques Nolot’s Porn Theater (whose French title, The Two-Headed Pussy, is the same as the porn playing at the titular movie house) is an almost nonchalant ethnography of the inner workings of a gay cruising haunt. But for all the calm-eyed observation of the minutiae of the patrons’ actions, the film is more interested in the dynamics of three people who spend more time outside the auditorium in the lobby.

A predictably world-wise and sassy middle-aged woman (Vittoria Scognamiglio) runs the front booth, dispensing ticket stubs, packs of tissues, and sage sexual advise in equal measure. A 50-year-old man (Nolot) with AIDS floats around the periphery of the theater—not because it makes him hot but instead comfortable (unlike many of the “straight” guys who shield their faces as they sneak in for a quick gay trick)—and writes poetry. And the theater’s sweet and studly young projectionist (Sébastien Viala) talks about his small-town values but seems to be suggesting that he’s ready to indulge in kinkier pleasures.

Throughout, the three characters volley for each other’s attention, and their games would seem more like a meet-cute prelude to a precious ménage-a-trois if they weren’t seemingly being held against and above the acts of the theater patrons. On the other hand, for as seedy as it initially seems, one would be hard-pressed to call the sex episodes (such as it is, since most of the time it seems to go no further than trading hand-jobs) totally anonymous. The people appear not only to be familiar with each other (one drag queen claims to be waiting for her favorite sex partner, saying he only comes in on that particular day of the week), but they also, as a collective, obey their own unwritten set of social mores to the tune of a Hawks picture.

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So, even if many of Porn Theater’s characters are painted with an unsavory whiff of discontent (which can’t exactly be said of the three main characters), at the very least the rules prevent anything truly unpleasant from occurring inside the theater. There are no rapes, no beatings, when condoms break the sex ends immediately, and even a mid-film cop raid seems more based on latent racism against Arab immigrants than homophobia.

Nolot sustains a graceful balancing act between realism and fantasy, best represented by the chubby drag queen with a hand fan who gives himself so completely over to his private personal fantasy world as an irresistible debutante that it’s all the more heartbreaking to see him rejected time and again, eventually sucking off a noticeably disinterested tool. Every sexual fantasy that comes true is usually tempered by the placement of a depressed, obese, old man masturbating with his back against a wall and his eyes staring off into space.

This might not be a world anyone was necessarily clamoring to better understand—least of all, perhaps, the characters of the film, considering that they prefer to watch pussy porn instead of dick flicks. But Nolot’s considerate portrait turns this panorama of wadded-tissues, bathroom trysts, and sticky orange theater seats into yet another provocative examination of the cinematic relationship between the viewer and the viewed.

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Score: 
 Cast: Vittoria Scognamiglio, Jacques Nolot, Sébastien Viala, Olivier Torres, Lionel Goldstein, Frédéric Longbois, Fouad Zeraoui, Jean-Louis Coquery  Director: Jacques Nolot  Screenwriter: Jacques Nolot  Distributor: Strand Releasing  Running Time: 90 min  Rating: NR  Year: 2002  Buy: Video

Eric Henderson

Eric Henderson is the web content manager for WCCO-TV. His writing has also appeared in City Pages.

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