Les secrets du Kamasutra

I've been a fan of Katsumi ever since her earlier mixed combo videos, made in L.A. with the likes of Mandingo and Lexington Steele. She also makes high-quality French videos, and this is one of the best.

Director/cinematographer Christophe Mourthé is slightly controversial, since he represents the leading edge of a pretentious, abstract MOS sort of porn, best exemplified in the U.S. by auteurs like Andrew Blake, Philip Mond and Michael Ninn. Back in the '60s Nick Millard pioneered this genre, but I prefer the more modern approach. I had previously seen Mourthé's debut work SEX ME, which was a repetitious, tedious fetish video, reminiscent of the excesses of music videos.

With this KAMASUTRA opus, Mourthé wisely concentrated his efforts on evocative styling (of Katsumi and her settings), creating a dreamy, often hypnotic XXX-er. If you want dramatic content you'll have to look elsewhere, but for Katsumi aficionados and porn fans who can tolerate Andrew Blake-style visuals this is the ticket.

Format is simply three contrasting views of Katsumi, making love to hunk Ramon, with cutting between the 3 areas of action to keep things interesting. At 85 minutes it's obviously too long, but I enjoyed the lion's share of the footage, and there's always that omnipresent FF button.

Perhaps the most outstanding segment is Katsumi in traditional Japanese garb (and quite striking without makeup) doing a tea ceremony, some evocative hand movements for a brief dance-in-place, and servicing Ramon without changing her facial expression. It's the antithesis of the clichéd moaning & groaning, idiotic "pretend passion" that dominates porn, and watching Katsumi is literally refreshing.

The other two segments have her in modern settings, one straight and the other an s&m/b&d exercise shown in black & white. For the latter, Katsumi is mainly in charge, dishing out punishment to Ramon (and he loves it!), though there is a brief interlude of her bound and escaping from her captivity. A lovely yellow bird (in its cage, allowed to escape & roam free) adds to the beauty of the setting, with Mourthé indulging his strangeness with the final credits which show off Katsumi's fabulous high heels, as she is shown posing next to an escaped mouse (!).

The new age music drones on, but KAMASUTRA proves one can't get enough of Katsumi. Along the way she and Ramon demonstrate many sexual positions, some of them rather acrobatic, so at least this is one video that lives up (sort of) to the usually misleading KAMASUTRA title. Kudos to the stylist, costumer and makeup artists, all of whom do stellar work here.