Foreign Films on DVD

PORN THEATER, as its title suggests, covers a day in the life of a Parisian pornographic cinema, foregrounding its marginalized male patrons and their activities inside. Because the film cuts between only three locations--the ticket area, the main viewing theater, and the grungy, yellow bathroom--it effectively seals off the world outside, providing the viewer with a heightened sense of containment. An extraordinary amount of screentime is given to the spectators in the theater simply watching the film, the effect of which is almost Hitchcockean in the sense of cinematic double entendre--as one watches the characters in the movie viewing a movie, one becomes conscious of the architecture of the theater, the mechanics of film projection, and the other viewers. When PORN THEATER draws to a close, then, it is no surprise the pornographic film the characters watch also comes to conclusion, and everyone must leave their respective theaters more or less together. The film additionally makes comment on disease and desire and provides comic relief, though mostly at the expense of one hirsute drag queen. As one might also expect from the title, the film carries a ton of sexual content, though only between the male patrons of the theater, unsure as to whether they've come to reinforce their heterosexual desires through the movie or to cruise the other customers for homosexual encounters.