8. The Pornographer (2001)
Jacques Laurent was a pornographic film maker during the 1970s and 1980s. He hasn't directed a film in 20 years. He was very adept at being a pornographer due to his subversive style which was informed by 1960s countercultural ideals. He made quality porn. In the new millennium Jacques finds himself directing a porn movie again. He is not getting on with the producer of the film whose only thoughts are of budgetary restraints. Jacques wants to be more artistic. The rest of the film concerns his troubled relationship with his son and him adjusting to life post-divorce. Quite a boring film, which is pretentious in its ambitions and ideology. The porn scenes are explicit (featuring French porn actress Ovidie) but there is no way you will gain anything from them because they are filmed in a very clinical style. It appears to the viewer that the scenes have been inserted merely as a gimmick to put bums on cinema seats and popcorn in mouths. The film does in fact contain all of the worst pretensions of French art house cinema - portentous dialogue, a very weak and confusing plot, a sombre and heavy atmosphere. It just seems like director Bertrand Bonello wanted to show hard core porn and then built a shoddy story around it. Although it contains hardcore inserts, the movie is rather flaccid and in general poor.