Elektra Luxx (2010/Sony DVD)

 

Picture: C     Sound: C+     Extras: C     Feature: C+

 

 

Spoofing the erotica industry is not easy and you can choose to do that within the industry or with it as an aside, the latter of which is what Sebastian Gutierrez’s Elektra Luxx (2010) does and has some success with.  The underrated Carla Gugino plays the title character, a former XXX star who has decided to retire from the business to move onto a new life, but uses her past to make money and has started by teaching a sex sermon to women to help them feel more comfortable with their sexuality.  But Luxx wants more with her life.

 

Though this is amusing often and has a better script than expected (the dialogue is not shoddy like it usually is for such a project, what also helps is Gugino (who actually has to downplay her natural beauty here, which says something) and a surprisingly strong supporting cast that includes Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Kathleen Quinlan, Timothy Olyphant, Adrianne Palicki (recently cast as Wonder Woman for good reason), Julianne Moore, Emmanuel Chriqui, Justin Kirk and other lesser-known talents (who should be known) that makes this remarkably believable throughout.

 

There is only so much they are able to do and some subplots are underdeveloped and do not add enough to the goings on.  This is a case where maybe this could have run longer and worked better, but it is an interesting and sometimes risk-taking work worth a look and smarter than you might expect.

 

The anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image is softer then I would have liked, though color is not bad and the overall camera shoot is good, skipping shaky camerawork to its great advantage.  The Dolby Digital 5.1 mix tries to boost what is essentially a simple stereo soundtrack and it is not bad, but there is not much of a soundfield here.  The only extra is deleted scenes worth seeing afterwards.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo