The Devil in Miss Jones

The popularity and success of Paul Thomas Anderson's Boogie Nights has given a fillip to one particular discourse of porn cinema: The 70s represent a pre-video, pre-AIDS, prelapsarian golden age in which the porn film might have the semblance of a plot instead of just presenting a series of stunt fuck "attractions".

In this context, Gerard Damiano's follow up to Deep Throat – the film which inaugurated the "porno chic" era circa 1973-75 – emerges as an interesting test case. An unusually cerebral and well-acted entry, it presents what could be interpreted as an anti-porn message. Not, of course, in the sense of seeking to connect pornography with violence against women or somesuch, more in terms of asking existential questions about the utter meaninglessness and pointlessness of it all, suggesting that satisfaction is at best transitory, at worst unattainable.

We open with a man and a woman in an otherwise empty, anonymous, room:

Woman: Put your cock in me… I can't do it by myself…

Man, uninterested: Close your eyes. You'll see. I'm not crazy. He's here. He'll come

Woman, trying to arouse herself: I can't come, damn you

We then backtrack as our titular character, portrayed by Georgina Spelvin – a feminisation of the traditional male actor's pseudonym and one of the in-jokes that suggests the film's artistic/serious pretensions – is formally introduced. A lonely middle-aged virgin, Miss Jones slits her wrists in the bath, to emerge into the afterlife. The entity handling her case, Abaca, indicates that she poses the celestial bureaucracy something of a problem: Having otherwise lived a virtuous life but for her "accident", she isn't really a candidate for Hell, yet her self-annihilation dictates that she should go there rather than Heaven.

After some debate, it is decided that Miss Jones may return to the world for a short time to experience the sensual gratification – or lust, as she puts it – she denied herself in life. Then, when Abaca calls her back, he will have justification for sending her on her way to Hell.

A series of minimalistically directed, near tableaux vivant style sexual encounters follow, managing to be simultaneously arousing in terms of their action and distancing in terms of their raw, unadorned ugliness.

First, Miss Jones meets The Teacher, incarnated by Deep Throat's male lead, Harry Re(e|a)ms, whose job it is to cure her of her inhibitions and provide for Miss Jones initiation. This entails inserting a plug up her anus and having her fellate him before – with increasing enthusiasm – she requests that he put his penis in her and takes control…

From here we segue into a gentle 'lesbian' scene, involving oil and a plastic-sheeted mattress, followed by Miss Jones pleasuring herself in the bath. (Spaghetti western fans may be amused to know that – at least on the print I saw, the DVD sourced from an old VCX video copyrighted 1980 – the music for the latter sequence is lifted from the final corrida in Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West; the music throughout the film is generally quite beautiful and effective)

After another interlude with The Teacher, and another solo scene during which Miss Jones inserts grapes into her vagina – soon after followed by the inevitable banana – and plays suggestively with a snake, Miss Jones meets Abaca once more. She pleads to be allowed to live out her life, but he says he can do nothing.

Next up is a scene with a man and another woman, with a soupçla;on of snowballing, followed by a – then daring – double penetration. By now she Miss Jones a completely lascivious sexual animal who knows what she wants: "Harder, faster. Fuck me harder… I want to feel your cum on me. I want to feel the juice run down my legs…"

Recalled by Abaca after this climax, Miss Jones again begs with Abaca, but he refuses and tells her that it is time.

Thus, Miss Jones is plunged into hell and, it turns out, our opening scene of two individuals wrapped up in their own worlds, unable to connect to one another. It's a denouement that could have come more or less straight from Jean-Paul Sartre's huis clos.