lor_ – Terrific Marc Dorcel feature should have launched Matalana’s career:
I recall rather vividly Georgina Spelvin’s sudden “overnight success” 43 years ago when Damiano’s “Devil in Miss Jones” made her an instant superstar. On the basis of that single performance her acting was compared favorably with Marlon Brando, then riding high with critical accolades for his wrenching work in Bertolucci’s “Last Tango in Paris”.
I had a similar reaction to the performance of Black actress Matalana in this forgotten Marc Dorcel opus, but alas, other than a series of long out-of-print Jim Enright reality style porn videos this talent is unseen. She plays an unusual role: that of a voodoo practitioner who advertises on late night TV! Who knew French television was so advanced, when here in America we get ads for magical scratch remover from your car or Phone Sex services instead.
At any rate Mlle. M gets a client when Dorcel superstar Laure Sainclair, the actress who singlehandedly put the French porno meister on the international map back in the ’90s, catches her no-good husband David Perry cheating.
Someone put a hex on the menu feature of my Wicked import DVD of the film, so I could only catch the basics from its untranslated (for me) French soundtrack. It seems that Matalana manipulates the heck out of Laure, pimping her out to various horny gentlemen, while crafting a voodoo doll of Perry to give him the heebie-jeebies. But what really matters is that M. is spectacular in her sex scenes, with a great body reminiscent of some of my favorite Black models for Mayfair Magazine back in the day, notably Lucienne Camille. She upstages star Sainclair, perhaps the first time that happened to her on French soil (Laure played second banana to Jenna Jameson when Dorcel co-produced “Wicked Weapon” with, natch, Wicked Pictures in 1999).
I’ve not analyzed why the change, but there was a simplicity, a sincerity and moreover an emphasis on beauty in sex with these ’90s into the new millennium Dorcel features, that is wholly lacking from its highly artificial and polyglot (they are made by directors from England and all over the place and often shot in Eastern European with no dialog) recent product line. Of course there’s no shortage of new female talent to follow in Laure’s beautiful footsteps, but the heart is missing, and certainly exotic talent of Matalana’s caliber doesn’t just pop up from Euro Central Casting.
