A French Affair

Digital Playground has been cranking out porn since before the millennium, but major changes have occurred in the last 4 years after international conglomerates stepped in and bought up the assets of the famous "Pirates" label.

Biggest shift is the production source of new DP releases, as well as its hdqts., at least for record-keeping purposes (that address that legally must be displayed on the DVD back liner), moving from L.A. to Quebec.

Continental porn distributors like Private and Marc Dorcel have turned to British production to fill out their release schedules. So has DP, with several excellent Dick Bush videos released in the last two years. With "A French Affair" DP goes whole-hog: this is an imitation of Dorcel/Private videos from Brit director DiSanto (aka William Disley) and I enjoyed it just as I would one of his less convoluted-to- market offerings.

In fact, I managed to identify DiSanto as the director early in watching the show, even though he is not credited on the packaging or opening credits -equivalent to Leonard Feather's delightful "blindfold tests" in the old downbeat jazz magazine. The narration replacing dialog scenes, and even a central location set in a night club evoke DiSanto's style to a T: the nightclub is in Paris but is lit and decorated just like those in DiSanto's British features. DiSanto is also responsible for another recent DP release "Erotica FM".

Oddest element here is in the casting of Mike Angelo as a high-toned procurer. With the divine Stella Cox as his Girl Friday, he makes sure that big shot clients visiting Paris are provided with sexual escorts of the highest caliber. This amounts to a very similar variation on the plot line to an earlier DiSanto film for daring! Media titled "Pretty Little Playthings".

Angelo is a reliable and often amusing Euro Porn stud, and even though he is highly placed in the credit list here he has no sex scenes. The humping instead is carried out by Ian Scott, whose character is named Ian but who gets his French nom de porn "Yanick Shaft" in the Digitial Playground credits, alongside the venerable British stud Marc Rose. Odd man out is Freddie Flavas, credited here as Freddie Fox just to confuse me.

There's no story progression, just five solid sex vignettes mixing and matching the cast. It's a nice mixture of British and Continental talent, the formula that Dorcel exploits so well in his videos, and though dialog is in English at least one of the French gals provides lots of French in her porn-speak while in the throes of passion. I guess "Right there!", "Don't Stop!", "F*ck yeah!" and "Oh, God!" are recognizable in any language.

Dorcel superstar Anna Polina gets top billing, but the other girls are more impressive this time, especially Nikita Bellucci, Sophia Laure and Lea Guerlin, all Dorcel stablemates.