Paul Thomas Anderson
Boogie Nights

Which teenager, or perhaps even post-teenager, has never dreamed of becoming, at least for a day, a porn actor? Come on, let's set hypocrisy aside. I believe few would say no in their hearts, and in any case, no one would refuse this opportunity if, as a partner, they could have the great Julianne Moore.

All of this would be enough to end this review with a round of applause for the producers, the director, and the casting office of "Boogie Nights" for choosing the Titianesque actress as the female lead of this feature film. And, of course, with a five-star rating.

But we're among serious people, on a serious site, and a typically serious reviewer like me can't refrain from delving a little deeper, in a metaphorical sense, obviously.

So, starting over, this "Boogie Nights" (1997), the work of then-promising director Paul Thomas Anderson, is an excellent film that aims to describe, in a disenchanted way, the drift of contemporary American society - almost as an avant-garde for the entire West - and the commerce, dramas, sorrows, and existential deficiencies that lie behind the world of "dreams," as indeed, from a masculinist (but also feminist: look at Vanessa del Rio) perspective, the wealthy pornographic cinema appears, industry included, between the '70s and '80s of the last century.

A film that essentially strips bare, in both physical and figurative senses, the appearances of hardcore cinema, revealing how the commerce of flesh, men, and assorted drugs further corrupts an already dissolving society.

All of this is done, it must be said, in a particularly effective narrative way, illustrating the story of a well-endowed young man (the excellent Mark Wahlberg, loosely inspired by John Holmes) who, as an amateur, becomes an authentic star of the genre at the end of the '70s, succumbing to vices and drugs while the "golden" world that was is overwhelmed by new tastes and the spread of VHS, which gradually reduces that cinema - perhaps authentic, who knows - to mere reproduction of sexual acts for public consumption.

The main story is garnished with anecdotes that are sometimes amusing, sometimes dramatic, which describe the various constellation of people in the red-light film world with tones that are sometimes amused, sometimes dark, never moralistic but strictly descriptive, that elevate the value of this film above average.

The added value of the work is, in my view, found in a happy casting choice that - irony aside - features an inspired Julianne Moore alongside the young, and currently disappearing, Heather Graham in the scantily clad roles of two declining porn actresses, the already mentioned Wahlberg in the lead role, and three exceptional actors as supporting characters, such as the great Burt Reynolds - in the role of the unscrupulous producer, director, and talent scout - William H. Macy, in the splendid role of a cameraman frustrated by the fact of loving a woman who goes with everyone (a terrible and distressing situation, indeed), as well as John C. Reilly, in the part of a porn actor partially akin to the famous Ron Jeremy.

Also noteworthy are the appearances of standout names from recent American cinema, like Don Cheadle, Alfred Molina, and Philip S. Hoffmann, the director's fetish actor, as would be seen in the subsequent "Magnolia."

Giving a synthetic evaluation of this film, rewatched years after its release, it may be noted how, in describing the red-light cinema world as a filter to decrypt the social-economic context of a country, the director ends up trying too hard: I do not believe, in other words, that such a professional environment provides the key to better understand the world; it perhaps only gives us elements to understand the not too linear and pacified psychology of those who work in it: on this point, the film suggests some reflections, both in regards to the circumstances that drive a person to take part in certain films (different from the quips at the start of the review) and in regards to the frustration of emotional relationships among actors, technicians, in constant contact with the commercialization of flesh: splendid, in this regard, the scene in which Moore allows Wahlberg to "lose himself" with her during the shooting, almost granting him love, rather than sex.

A film that partially fails, therefore, in portraying an era, but hits when telling the stories of individual people, with peaks that are sometimes dramatic, sometimes poetic, which, beyond the scabrous themes addressed, justify an excellent rating and a careful viewing.