By Any Other Name

I love ForPlay Films and all Inka Winters' erotica, and this is no exception. Her work is not only filmed cinematically and beautifully, it also always centers the humanity and interior lives of the performers, rather than close-ups of their genitalia. So nice to see faces (expressing GENUINE pleasure) in my porn - thank you Inka Winter and DORCEL for celebrating true enjoyment and pleasure of women and all your performers with agency and complexity!

So yes - I, personally, value erotica that treats me and other women and femmes as subjects, not objects. Erotica that actually makes me feel GOOD about myself, my desires, and my body. And I appreciate Inka Winter so much for always doing that in her work, whether she tilts soft-core or ventures lightly into BDSM.

This film is for people who love a slow, emotionally-driven burn, who value inclusion and the diversity of real-life bodies and people's desires. If you're looking for rough, hard-core stuff - you do you! -you'll honestly be better served by looking elsewhere. When a filmmaker says "my kink is connection" you can expect that the emphasis is on hearts and minds, as expressed through bodies.

I also have to respond to the reviewer below me - with all due respect, you absolutely have the right to not find this (or anything else) erotic. You have the right to find people more, or less, attractive. But I submit that perhaps this film is not erotic *for you*, that the (as you described) "plump, matronly" Mandi is not YOUR cup of tea. Dismissing Mandi Slade's wonderful, nuanced, grounded performance just because she doesn't meet your tastes illustrates exactly WHY we need porn like this. Where we all, no matter our bodies or identity, get to experience our own sexualities and desires as VALID. The gorgeous Mandi Slade is the protagonist in her own story - subject, not object - as we all deserve to be, and unfortunately women so rarely are, in porn.

If you like this film, check out more of Inka Winter's work at ForPlay Films dot com, and I know she's done work with Lust Cinema too (there's a gorgeous Bridgerton-inspired series they've got!). And whatever your cup of erotic tea or shot of pornographic whisky is, I hope you find it out there! And hopefully, like Inka Winter's ongoing efforts, your kind of erotica also treats its performers like full humans and makes the world of porn a slightly better place.

Inka Winter's heart is definitely in the right place: I'm firmly in favor of her wanting to expand explicit erotica to include femme-friendly content that is positive, not gonzo porn that currently dominates this area of entertainment.

My two favorite Adult Entertainment filmmakers are Nica Noelle and Missa X, both with similar aims as Inka, but they have demonstrated quite a resume of hundreds of excellent videos both female-friendly and highly erotic. Winter's newest feature "By Any Other Name" scores highly in ambition, but low in achievement. Put simply, Erotic cinema needs to be erotic, and this feature is dull, both in its story scenes and in its three much-too-lengthy sex scenes. And the use of softcore camera angles renders the sex XXX but only borderline. It reminded me of Joe Sarno's ancient (now) technique of shooting actual "real" sex scenes but presenting them as visually softcore, before he went whole-hog XXX with his dozens of subpar hardcore videos in the 1980s.

The filmmaker whose work it most closely resembles is director Todd Haynes, most specifically his Douglas Sirk-oriented success "Far From Heaven", starring Julianne Moore. Like Haynes, Winter has a nostalgic, almost campy (but played straight) aspect in its 1950s costuming and hairdos. But the characters never come to life.

Lead player is Mandi Slade, previously an actress in bondage/fetish videos, who directed "The Blind Date", a female-friendly porn feature in 2023. She's a plump, matronly-looking actress playing a shrink, whose sessions with her patients form the starting point for the action. Maria Dietrich and Astro Domina pour out their family stories to her, with emphasis on the impact of their mothers, and it's not very interesting. In fact, during Maria's second session, Mandi loses interest and stops listening, instead conjuring up an erotic fantasy (lasting over half an hour, like the movie's other two sex scenes) of patient Astro Domina humping a stud (Leo Vice) outside, for which she has to apologize to Maria for being inattentive, and schedule a freebie session to make up for the lapse.

Mandi is married to professor of thermodynamics Dillon DIaz, whose acting is quite good. The other two rather tedious sex scenes are Mandi with her husband, and then an unlikely 3-way involving Mandi, Dillon and Mandi's psych intern Johnny B who she is mentoring. That threesome is a throwback to the bisexual porn genre of several decades ago with Gay Porn actors Dillon and Johnny involved in blow jobs with each other, not just servicing Mandi.

The closest content to eroticism is the Astro/Leo sex scene, both Asian-American performers. Porn has a number of mature female stars lately, such as Erica Lauren, Maggie Green, Andi James and Sally D'Angelo, but Mandi's appeal is in her ordinary "non-porno" look, not good looks or sexiness of any sort. If she was a great actress, for exmple one could look to the fabulous "Devil in Miss Jones" porn star of the '70s Georgina Spelvn, a favorite of mine, one could overlook her lack of visual appeal, but no such luck. As directors, both Inka and Mandi have cast beauties (like Lumi Ray and Alexis Tae) in their movies, so why not here?

All told, nice try, but no cigar. In a porn context, the classic line from Irving Mills & Duke Ellington's "It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)" applies, no pun intended on swing or swinging.