Porno

They say that women don’t like porn.   By porn, if you mean the grimy, icky “stag movies” I heard about in my youth, or their latest incarnation- the sleazy, raunch fest known as the sex tape, you can count me out.

I don’t care if it’s on black and white eight millimeter,  dreamy soft core, professionally-shot with gauzy lens in living, heaving technicolor, or just lurking around the alley of my computer. No way, Russ Meyer.  If it comes on screen, (all puns intended) I’m outta there.

But there is one pornmeister, oops, pornmistress,  I love.  Her name is Nancy Meyers, and she is the genius who created a whole new movie genre- pornography for women.

Her film trilogy, The Parent Trap, Something’s Gotta Give, and It’s Complicated show her artistry and growth as a dirty movie maker right up with the best/worst of them.

But instead of relying on naked bodies, and explicit sexual acts to get us hot and bothered,  she has discovered a whole new bag of tricks.  Ms. Meyers uses images of  impossibly gorgeous houses, contrite ex husbands, younger lusting boyfriends,  and sumptuous, mouth-watering food – and more food- to bring us to climax.  And it works for me.  Every time.

You didn’t realize those movies were pornographic?  Grab your Burberry raincoat.  Let’s look at the evidence, shall we?

Let’s consider the London townhouse in The Parent Trap, the beach house in Something’s Gotta Give, and the kitchen, gourmet food shop, and the garden in It’s Complicated.

One glimpse of  these unbelievably spectacular locales starts my pulse racing.  Soon I am ogling, drooling, panting, and lusting for the all white bedrooms, the sumptuous, jewelry-bedecked dressing tables, the marble pastry boards, the sprays of lavender, the dewy green herbs.

Remember the jar of white rocks and white dinner plates that Diane Keaton collected in SGG?  Even her most casual bibelots were color-coordinated.  If men’s porn is shot in the valley with a ratty bed or a beat-up couch making up the key elements of set design, Nancy’s movies are lavishly coordinated by the likes of Dean Tavoularis  and Jon Hutman.

And these guys really know what it takes to please a women.  Thousand thread- count sheets, divine duvets, state-of the-art kitchen islands, and real estate so expensive only a multi-millionairess could afford the zip code.

And this is key.  All three heroines of these movies are single.  No man in sight.  (You can’t count lovable old Grandfather in TPT.)  They inhabit all this high end real estate on their own.  Whew.  Just thinking about that dirty little secret makes me  hot.   I need a cigarette.

And the way she teases us with food.  The things she does with a French chicken at Le Grand Colbert in Paris and a capon in Meryl’s California kitchen are downright obscene.

Muffins, rolls, bread, cookies, cakes are all lasciviously panned at the food shop in IC.  Not just content with this voyeurism,  chocolate croissants are actually hand-made on screen. These scenes should be rated “Adults Only” by Martha Stewart.

Like any good porn film, Ms. Meyers’ flicks have “group scenes.”  Remember the wine-drinking orgy with Rita, Ally, and Mary Kay?  Or the “bed scene” with Mom and the kids  in It’s Complicated?

And she usually throws in the spicy plot device of two men with one woman.  Come on, this is every woman’s fantasy.  I don’t mean for sex.  I mean, every woman wants an ex husband admitting he made a BIG mistake and wants to come back while, at the same time,  her handsome young stud is also besotted,  and can’t wait to tell her so.

Nancy’s lovers don’t really act dirty.  They talk dirty.

“Ooh, honey, I miss you.”  “Ooh, darling, you were the greatest cook, the most loving mother, I never should have left you for that terrible bimbo…”  Nancy’s porn stars actually say this kind of stuff. I’m ashamed to eavesdrop.  I feel so violated,  and yet so good.

Nancy Meyers has discovered what every woman wants.  (The name, by the way, of another of  her big box office successes.)  Love, family, food, decor.  It might seem harmless enough to you, but it’s smut to me.

Justice Potter Stewart once said.  “Pornography?  I can’t define it but I know it when I see it.”

And when I see Jack Nicholson, Jack Nicholson, for pete’s sake, begging for a second chance with middle-aged Diane Keaton,  I know I have just seen something tawdry.

Nancy Meyers, shame on you.  Now get me a copy of Architectural Digest and some cigarettes.  And close the door.   I don’t want to be disturbed.