The Au Pairs

Dick Bush's "The Au Pairs" is standard XXX romance, a far cry from the glory days of Val Guest's classic 1972 "Au Pair Girls" starring Gabrielle Drake. But by a distribution quirk it is of interest in defining what separates hardcore porn from softcore, in practice.

I have dozens of British XXX porn videos released by Erigo Distribution, but this is the first one I've watched that is softcore in content. And watching it carefully, it is clearly a watered-down version of a film originally shot in hardcore form.

That's because its content is actually right smack dab on the borderline, whether by accident or design. It's almost as if Bush, and his distributor plus satellite vendor Adult Channel for which it was shot are testing the boundaries of what's currently acceptable.

The five vignettes starring top UK talent unfold with total predictability. The sweet young thing working as an au pair attracts the attention of the man (or sometimes the woman) of the house and infidelity strikes, since in porn no temptation is ever resisted. Bush doesn't take any of the credits, but assigns the work to his production company Kaizen XXX, clearly not proud of this routine effort.

His usual troupe shows up including Ian Hurley and Liselle Bailey in non-sex assignments. The sexy folk, led by Jasmine Webb for IR content and the bosomy Leigh Darby for MILF content, do their thing and the presentation is curious.

Sex scenes are carefully cropped so that any penetration is just out of frame, with that softcore "did they or didn't they?" reaction, given that one cannot actually see the dirty deed. But several other usually verboten images are shown: proudly erect cocks on screen, poised to penetrate but agonizingly prevented by a cutaway; hand jobs on erect and even wetted-down cocks; and most pointedly of all, money shots.

As in many a crappy hardcore movie, the money shots are faked, looking fake enough to pass muster as not being real and therefore not censorable. Several times we have fake spunk tossed on a girl's chest or face from off-screen as if delivered by the invisible leading man -that's not proof enough to render the footage hardcore.

So this minor film emerges as merely a yardstick for what's acceptable these days in polite company, not qualifying as diverting entertainment.