The old joke about leaving a movie and humming the scenery applies to this misguided effort to tap hardcore porn talent to make a bigger-budget soft-core movie. It might have had some value had the French filmmakers taken the more obvious approach of shooting scenes both ways (as is still done for exploiting XXX videos re-edited for Pay-Cable use).
The conceit of showing us behind the scenes action of a shoot, apparently taking place in Budapest or perhaps Prague, for a Cleopatra movie in Soft X style is merely dull and adds little to the relatively sumptuous sets and cast of dozens of nude extras. For a successful project albeit strictly XXX, just compare with Antonio Adamo's decade-later "Roma" trilogy, which dispensed with the film-within-a-film gambit.
So we get Zara Whites in a nearly mainstream project, but without the permission to do what comes naturally, namely to consummate her many sex scenes. The cutting away after the tease becomes tiresome in a hurry, and the many, many femme extras fully exposed (usually with full bushes rather than subsequent shaved-vaginas) should have been porn actresses instead to permit a dual version approach.
Lots of touristy shots of the Eastern European city have Zara shopping at markets and picking up a Russian stud who becomes her lover and unlikely acting protege. Roberto Malone pops up as a stereotypical casting couch producer near the end, and in the original "equal time" title, the great Beatrice Valle becomes almost an afterthought co-star when she visits the set and BFF Joy, and is injected into the production.
Dubbing into English, especially Zara doing her own voice, is very good, and the only scene I thought was interesting (apart from staring at so much simulated, wimpy sex) was Valle and Whites discussing the movie "House of Dreams" starring Jeanna Fine (who they namedrop specifically) and Zara Whites, though of course in context it would be starring Jeanna Fine and Joy as Zara is playing a character here, not herself.
The conceit of showing us behind the scenes action of a shoot, apparently taking place in Budapest or perhaps Prague, for a Cleopatra movie in Soft X style is merely dull and adds little to the relatively sumptuous sets and cast of dozens of nude extras. For a successful project albeit strictly XXX, just compare with Antonio Adamo's decade-later "Roma" trilogy, which dispensed with the film-within-a-film gambit.
So we get Zara Whites in a nearly mainstream project, but without the permission to do what comes naturally, namely to consummate her many sex scenes. The cutting away after the tease becomes tiresome in a hurry, and the many, many femme extras fully exposed (usually with full bushes rather than subsequent shaved-vaginas) should have been porn actresses instead to permit a dual version approach.
Lots of touristy shots of the Eastern European city have Zara shopping at markets and picking up a Russian stud who becomes her lover and unlikely acting protege. Roberto Malone pops up as a stereotypical casting couch producer near the end, and in the original "equal time" title, the great Beatrice Valle becomes almost an afterthought co-star when she visits the set and BFF Joy, and is injected into the production.
Dubbing into English, especially Zara doing her own voice, is very good, and the only scene I thought was interesting (apart from staring at so much simulated, wimpy sex) was Valle and Whites discussing the movie "House of Dreams" starring Jeanna Fine (who they namedrop specifically) and Zara Whites, though of course in context it would be starring Jeanna Fine and Joy as Zara is playing a character here, not herself.