AROUSED – The Review

Look at that poster below. Look at the “artful” way the cursive “A” conforms to the buttocks of the model they’ve used to stand in for the sixteen porn stars interviewed in this documentary. The website (NSFW) for The Aroused Project claims that it’s about “the lost sensuality of a woman.” The implication, to me at least, is that pornography has warped sensuality and sexuality into commodification, and that director Deborah Anderson seeks to pierce that cultural norm by talking to “the real women” behind these cheesy stage names.

Maybe. There’s a blurry line between honest artistic intent and just another form of exploitation. In either case, this isn’t really what these women are “really” like. They might be opening up about their lives and personal philosophies, but it’s still in a carefully constructed environment, and their confessions are filtered through the sensibilities of the filmmakers. So beyond the pretension of truth, is Anderson really seeking to help us understand these women on a deeper level by talking to them while they’re posing naked on a bed?

Or maybe she just wants to shill her art book of the same name as the film. After all, this is essentially a “making of” for that book. It shows the actresses getting their makeup prepped for the photo shoot, and some glimpses of said shoot. There are a few random sojourns to the house of a friend of Anderson’s who works in the porn industry, and who talks about what the conditions are like for young women looking to “make it.” It all feels rather slapshod and halfhearted.

There are some interesting things that the actresses have to say, though most of them are unlikely to shock unless one is solely familiar with pornography as a sinister abstract. None of them originally set out to be Hollywood actresses but “fell.” In fact, none of them “fell” into it at all. They weren’t molested when they were younger. Etc. etc., one stereotype after another gets pushed back. But whatever truth about pornography and how women fare in it that any viewer will glean from the interviews will likely conform to their pre-set assumptions about this world.

As for the stars themselves, well, they seem more like an interchangeable mash of faces than many distinct people. Even though the movie insisted on reminding through title cards who each woman was (along with, curiously, their age and place of origin, as if that was crucial), I still couldn’t keep them straight. It doesn’t help that new interviewees keep getting introduced at random, and quite late into the film.

Mostly though, Aroused is such a bore, and even a viewer lured in by the promise of copious nudity will likely be worn out, despite the scant 70-minute runtime. After all, anyone horndog enough to seek this movie out just for the skin can see all of these women in much more revealing but less talky situations. The doc was at least able to hold my interest throughout the first half, when people are moving about as they prep for the shoot. But once the shoot begins (which accompanies an arbitrary shift from black and white to color), the film is literally nothing but shots of the actresses talking to the camera. Perhaps it’s meant to be subversive, given what they usually do for the camera, but it’s just tremendously dull.

There is a good film to be made about our societal image of what porn stars are like versus the reality that they live. Aroused is not that film.

1 out of 5 stars