Bare Essentials
FILM: The Girl Next Door
DIRECTOR: Christine Fugate
STARRING: Stacy Valentine
GRADE: B+
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DIRECTOR CHRISTINE FUGATE PROVIDES A SYMPATHETIC PORTRAYAL OF PORN STAR STACY VALENTINE IN THE GIRL NEXT
DOOR.
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Christine Fugate's documentary The Girl Next Door is a fascinating look
at the world of pornographic filmmaking and the meteoric career of one star in
particular. Twentysomething bottle blonde Stacy Valentine has made more than 50
hardcore films since 1995, sometimes appearing in as many as five movies a
month. She is blithely willing to perform most any sexual act in front of a
camera, straight or lesbian, with a single partner or with many. And she talks
about her sexual performances with disarming candor, explaining her
preparations for a scene of "double penetration" the way another actor might
ruminate about getting into character.
Her frankness, though, is something altogether different from
coarseness. She might be completely oblivious to her own nudity, allowing
makeup artists to cover blemishes on her buttocks and the inside of her thighs
with the same lack of distraction of a mainstream performer getting fitted for
a wig, but she nonetheless exudes a touching innocence, a vulnerability in her
off-camera life that makes the viewer's heart go out to her.
Far from the Hollywood flesh industry, Stacy was raised in Tulsa,
Okla., as Stacy Baker, the adopted daughter of a loving, loyal mother who
remains supportive despite her daughter's notorious career. Stacy's adoptive
father, however, was physically abusive, and Stacy clearly grew up distrustful
of men. Early on, she learned to use her sexual charms as a way of
attracting and holding boyfriends, even to the extent of being derided in high
school as the "town slut." Still, she dreamed of a sedate, respectable,
middle-class life. So she married and hoped to have children of her own. Her
bully of a husband, however, encouraged her to send nude photos of herself to a
men's magazine "amateur contest." She did, she won, and shortly she was posing
for Hustler, and shortly after that she was free of her husband and
became a rising porn star.
Stacy is completely unabashed about her profession. "I'm good at sex,"
she states matter-of-factly. And she's as delighted as an Oscar winner when
she's selected "best American starlet" at the Hot D'Or Awards during the Cannes
Film Festival. Regardless, Stacy's status in her industry and her relative
material success -- she makes $1,000 a day, $1,200-$1,500 for anal sex scenes
and $2,000 for double penetration -- have not brought her contentment. She
isn't even convinced of her sexual allure.
The most difficult scenes in the documentary follow Stacy to a
plastic surgeon where she undergoes liposuction on her hips and thighs, has her
own fat injected into her lips and has her breast implants changed out.
Explaining a palpable yearning in her private life, Stacy says, "Sex is
something just really hot and nasty and dirty while love is something else." A
young woman who fervently (and in some regards insightfully) asserts that
holding hands is a more intimate act than intercourse, Stacy is comfortable
with sex, but uncomfortable with love. And she's obviously suspicious of any
man who would profess to love her.
The Girl Next Door tracks a romance with a fellow porn star
named Julian. An arrestingly sad sequence shows Julian unable to perform when
he and another actor are supposed to have sex with Stacy at the same time.
Julian tells us at one point that the Stacy he's in love with is Stacy Baker,
not Stacy Valentine, and by the end of this surprisingly moving movie, we
realize that whether or not Stacy Valentine continues to work in adult films,
she will never find the love she yearns for until she allows Stacy Baker to
conquer Stacy Valentine.
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