After many years reviewing porn, and even more years watching it, we do occasionally get a bit bored with the regular porn formula (I know.. who would have thought it?). We spend quite a bit of time prowling the backwaters of the Internet looking for something a little different. Often, that quest ends in something too horrible for us to review here. There is a lot of very weird stuff out there. There are indeed no exceptions to Rule 34. Occasionally though we get lucky. Like panning for gold, after wading through mud for weeks at a time you might, just might see that gleam of gold that makes it all worthwhile.
This time our quest to find something a little different in the world of porn lead us to an independent porn site called Cinema Erotique. This is the home of Cherry Chapman, an independent porn producer. Unlike many independent producers, Cherry isn't trying to copy the big players or trying to be even dirtier. She isn't trying to fill a really specialised kink niche (midgets dressed as clowns blowing men in Santa suits anyone?). What she is producing is interesting, well made, original porn. She's also not American. This porn is shot mostly in London with English and Eastern European actors. I have to say, it makes a very nice change from the San-Pornando valley.
The first thing you need to know about Cherry's films is that they are short. Not 5 minute, watch a girl wanking short but an actual short film. About 15-25 minutes. Any film maker will tell you that making a short film is much harder than making something feature length. You only have a short time to tell the story, develop the characters and have everything that needs to happen, happen. In 20 minutes, Cherry packs in more story, character development, atmosphere and chemistry than you will see in a 3 hour porn marathon from one of the big studios.
We started out with a few of her newer features. In "The Long Goodbye" a woman bids a teary, and passionate goodbye to her sailor boyfriend as he prepares to set sail to "do his duty". Fairly standard plot you may think, until it turns out that he works on a car ferry and will be back by lunchtime. That's the other thing you find a lot of in Cherry's films - humour.
Our second film was "The Signal" based on a short story by the great French short story writer Guy de Maupassant. Now when I say, based on a short story by Guy de Maupassant, I actually mean based on a story by Guy de Maupassant. Unlike most porn that lays claim to some literary credibility, this is actually based on the story. It isn't based on some 1950s erotic remake of a book that claims to be based on the story. It is actually a pretty faithful retelling of the classic short story. And it's in French. With subtitles. I like the subtitles. I have said this before. A lot of producers shy away from them but I think it's a big improvement on overdubbing or having actors with little grasp of English reciting lines phonetically. A lot of Cherry's actors are Eastern European and, although their English is a lot better than my Hungarian, some of the dialogue in her non-subtitled movies comes across a bit "loook vot yoou deeed". I really think she should use the subtitles on more films. It's a lot more natural hearing people speak in a natural way rather than listening to very heavily accented English. Besides, French and other European languages are just so damn sexy to listen to.
There are a few things missing from Cherry's films that may surprise regular porn viewers. Cum-shots is one of them. We had watched 5 or 6 before we found a cum-shot. Those of you who have been reading this site for a while will know our views on cum-shots. They are completely unnecessary. Especially the modern porn obsession with the facial. Watching a guy pull out then wank himself over a woman's face isn't hot. It isn't sexy. It isn't "Dirty". There is a word for it. That word is dumb. If cum is your kink then by all means spooge away but to see the same thing in every scene? Cherry's films are a refreshing change.
The other thing missing is anal. Now an occasional anal scene is nice but I'll let you in on a secret - not all girls are complete anal whores who like nothing better than a little nasty ass to mouth action. I know.. unbelievable isn't it? Pretty much every scene in mainstream porn seems to involve anal and increasingly ass to mouth, so its absence is very welcome.
What there is in these films is sex. Not porn sex with pile-drivers and dirty talking and not the sort of sex you get in some "couples" films that's all soft focus and dreamy. They have sex. Good, normal, passionate, vigorous sex. The sort of sex normal people have. The sort of sex Mrs Dave and I have. The sort we had while watching these films. What you also get are normal looking people. Definitely at the attractive end of normal but they aren't your typical heavily made up, fake breasted, shaved to within an inch of their lives, bleached, porn valley types. They are attractive, natural people. And that is very nice to see.
Cherry's films aren't going to appeal to the hardcore crowd. They are aimed more at women and couples than single guys looking for wanking fodder. Most are solo girl or girl-girl but there is boy-girl action in some of them. I guess it's easier to find non-professional actresses who will do a solo scene or a girl-girl scene rather than a boy-girl.
The video quality is excellent - full HD available on all titles which is fantastic. They are distributed in WMV format though which isn't the most user friendly format for non-Windows users. On our system the latest 3 films simply would not play audio due to an unavailable audio codec and we had to resort to the lower quality .mov version to hear anything. For the 75% of you that use Windows this isn't ever going to be a problem. For the rest of you though it is something to look out for.
Cinema Erotique site is a pay site. It costs money to make good porn so Cherry needs to charge in order to keep making films. Unfortunately, making good porn takes time as well, so updates aren't all that frequent. To an Internet audience used to masses of new content on your typical pay sites, this may come as something of an unpleasant surprise. You really need to think about your membership as going to support a hardworking, independent porn producer rather than as a gateway to vast volumes of average quality content. Unfortunately I'm not sure that this will work with today's Internet crowd. She may be better off moving to a different subscription model. Maybe being able to make a donation to one of her works in progress or something like that. Having a "works in progress" section on the website would be a big improvement. At the moment there is nowhere people can look at to see what's coming up.
There are also a few other issues with the website. It looks great and everything works but it has the appearance of being inconsistently maintained. Nothing major. Some of the films don't have trailers or stills posted where others do (and there is clearly a space for them on the page) and some of the grammar and spelling make me think the site is being maintained by someone for whom English is a second language. Like I said, nothing major and only likely to be noticed by the truly pedantic but in today's competitive Internet porn world, the user experience has to be spot on.
I have always felt that the short story is the natural form for erotic writing. I am beginning to think that the short film may be the natural form for porn. I really liked these films. They aren't all great. Some are a bit avant-garde for my taste. Some are a little odd. But they are all different and they are all well done. This is quality, independent, well made porn. A big thumbs up from both of us. There should be more of it.
If you wish to see free samples of Cherry's work, you can click on one of these links:
