I would recommend Euphoria, Conquest, and Flashpoint particularly. None of them have what I would consider mainstream movie plots (or even straight-to-video or TV movie quality), but they are among the best plot-driven ones that have been produced.

I would also recommend Justine 2: Nothing to Hide, even though it's dated in style.

Hope that helps,

- Saki [faqs]

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Other recent films that you don't list that have above average adult plots are Rush, from Digital Playground, and Hercules, from Wicked. You also might want to check out Sweetwater, from Digital Sin, Heroin, Desperate Measures and Second Chance, all from Wicked.

If you don't mind older films, classics such as Desires Within Young Girls, from Caballero, Nurses of the 407, from I-Candy, Bad Girls, from VCX, Debbie Does Dallas, from either NuTech or VCX and I hate to recommend it since it is only available on DVD-R right now but Irresistible, from TVX (VCX) should fit your needs as well.

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But Rush is a good suggestion if you want a fair amount of "down time" in between sex scenes. I haven't counted it up, but a pretty significant amount of effort went into dialogue and action scenes.

A couple of other favorites of mine for (relatively) successful attempts at focus on plot and/or acting:

The Kissing Game (about double-crossing con artists)
The Gate (dark-tinged sex in the loony bin)
Dark Angels (a vampire flick)
Taken (a sort of dream kidnapping thing)
Bliss (middle-class suburban anomie)

But all of these are flawed movies. You can't expect TOO much, and cliched porn-type sex does occasionally break out.

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Also second Obibongs The Gate.

From your list, I though Dream Quest was pretty good.

Obibongs comments about sex vs. plot time is pretty good.

DenverDon

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75% of the time it is the sex scene, and 25% of the time is for plot and plot/character development.

DenverDon

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Perhaps another way of stating it is "if the film runs 100 minutes, then 75% of it will be purely the sex display, and 25% will be devoted purely to the development of plot and character".

If I understand Obibongs statement, these are somewhat rough estimates.

We should return this thread to answering Gambio's question.

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also check out the reviews of antonio passolini's movies

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It seems to me that there are two types of erotic movies.

The first one is the softcore or mainstream movie that focuses on the plot (that doesnt mean that the plot is any good but at least it's there). The sex scenes are few, short and you will only see an occasional breast or penis briefly.

The Second type is the porno movie. The focus is on sex, and not the plot or acting. The sex scenes dominate the film, as someone previously said, up to 75 % of the film is sex scenes.

It doesnt seem that there is anything in between...

I guess we need to look for a porno movie, rather than a mainstream/softcore movie, that doesnt instantly start with a sex scene, and where the first sex scene is lighter and less explicit, f.e. a quick blowjob in dim lightning. From the reviews i've read The Search for the Snow Leopard starts some way in that fashion, but the next scene is an orgie... Does anyone have suggestions for movies like this??

And secondly, how good is really the acting in porn, and who are the better actors (both male and female). I understand Drew Barrymore has been in some pornos, but has she acted?

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None are what I would consider great or even good movies from a mainstream standpoint, but, hey, they fit the real sex in a non-porn movie profile.

The reason I suspect that there isn't something that fits what you and your girlfriend are looking for is that there just isn't a market for it, or at least no one is willing to risk that there's no market for it. The mainstream studio system and nearly all actors would never risk the controversy and money-losing proposition (unrated and NC-17 movies generally cannot get advertising and theater runs). So from the traditional film side, that's why it's always the foreign and art house films that experiment with the explicit stuff. And that's also why the plots and acting tend to suck.

On the porn side, despite the grand dreams of directors, writers, stars and editors I've talked to over the years, there will probably never be a quality plot-based film with "just a little hardcore." That's because nearly all porn talent can't act, even the best scripts don't hold weight to the average mainstream ones, and the financial model (movies made for thousands, not millions) wouldn't work.

And when push comes to shove, it's a big shift of thinking to go from more and more jaded hardcore to something just a little bit harder than softcore. Pornographers are good at either completely explicit or complete softcore, but not very good at anything in between. Even Ona Zee, who staked her directoral career in adult on the premise of a "softer," more couple's friendly X, made films with the well-defined explicit sex scenes.

Some of the more articulate actors in the business, past and present: Tina Tyler, Chloe, Ginger Lynn, Annette Haven, Ashlyn Gere, Kylie Ireland, Paul Thomas, Mike Horner, and Jonathan Morgan.

Finally, Drew Barrymore has not been in porn. The mainstream actress has done nude roles and was in erotic mainstream movie Poison Ivy. There is a porn star by the stage name of Dru Berrymore, who some say looks like her (it's a really, really vague resemblance).

- Saki [faqs]

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Anyway, i guess no one would risk to make that kind of film that I was talking about...

Saki, you crossed off Dinner Party from my list, but from what i understand from the reviews it could just work for us anyway. What i couldnt make out of the reviews however, was if you can actually hear the actors during the sex scenes?

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Regarding The Fashionistas: There are plenty of reviews of Fash in the review database. But in a nutshell, there's extensive plot elements but the sex scenes are extremely long. The subject matter is BDSM (bondage, dominance, S&M) and definitely on the extreme side, so I don't think it would work for you.

- Saki [faqs]

Edited by - saki on 8/1/2003 2:49:16 PM

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