Taglines: There’s no such thing as going too far.
Angelina is an 18-year-old girl not far from graduating from high school. Her boyfriend Bobby suggests that she take naked pictures of herself and sell them. She is initially hesitant, but eventually does the photo shoot and uses the money to run away to San Francisco with her best friend Andrew. At a strip club party in the city, she meets a wealthy lawyer named Francis, who offers to introduce her to a glamorous world of expensive dresses and lavish parties.
Angelina also meets Margaret who is a lesbian and a former porn star turned adult film director. She offers Angelina, now using the porn name Cherry, direction in her entry into the San Francisco porn industry. She makes several soft pornography films before deciding to do a hardcore film. After she shoots the film, an angry Francis chastises her before getting them in a car accident. she returns home to find Andrew watching one of her films.
After an argument, she decides to leave and meets Margaret at a bar. They make out and go to Margaret’s apartment to have sex. She moves in with Margaret some time afterwards and becomes her lover, and takes on a new job as a porn director.
About Cherry is a 2012 drama film and the directorial debut of Stephen Elliott. It is based on a script written by Elliott and porn industry veteran Lorelei Lee. It stars Ashley Hinshaw, James Franco, Heather Graham, and Dev Patel. The project was filmed in San Francisco and premièred at the 2012 Berlin International Film Festival.
Film Review for About Cherry
Some women sell their bodies out of need. Some because they like the money or the independence. Angelina, the 18-year-old subject of “About Cherry,” is the first I’ve encountered who does it out of absentmindedness and a vague narcissism. Here is a movie that suggests prostitution is something that just sort of happens to you, like Lyme disease.
Angelina (Ashley Hinshaw) is a Long Beach teenager who lives unhappily with an alcoholic mother (Lili Taylor) and works in a Laundromat, doing (ding! plot point!) other people’s dirty laundry. Her boyfriend, a drummer in a rock band, suggests she can pick up a few hundred bucks by posing for nude photos. Fun fact: Boyfriends in rock bands are almost always drummers, because it’s easier for them to make eye contact than the other musicians.
Angelina takes the job, loses her laundry and seems about as affected as if a friend had snapped her with an iPhone. When the boyfriend sees the photos and is disturbed, she leaves Long Beach and travels to San Francisco with her BFF Andrew (Dev Patel), who she keeps around as sort of a mascot. She pets him, feeds him and lets him sleep in her bed. Some might find this a cruel sexual temptation. I suspect Angelina is so dim-witted, she doesn’t notice when she’s nude, and it never occurs to her that Andrew may have a crush.
In San Francisco, we follow her up, or down, the ladder of the porn industry, as she progresses passively from nude to girl-girl to boy-girl. The money gets better. It doesn’t occur to her that she has become a prostitute. She has sex with strangers for money, but protests “this is my job.” A wise old man in London named Henry Togna once suggested to me that his neighbor, the Duchess of Duke Street, among her many other accomplishments, ran a bordello. “Henry!” his wife protested. “You make her sound like a madam!” His reply: “Sex for cash, m’dear. That’s my definition.”
Angelina, now known professionally as Cherry, begins to work with Margaret (Heather Graham), a lesbian director who takes one look at her through the viewfinder and experiences true lust. You may remember Heather Graham as Roller Girl in “Boogie Nights.” It’s heartening to see that she has had such professional success.
In a sex club, Angelina meets a slick-taking lawyer named Francis (James Franco), who seems sort of nice until he turns her on to cocaine. The introduction of drugs is usually a crucial turning point in such stories, driving the heroine into degradation. In Angelina’s case, she seems to like cocaine well enough, but it doesn’t seem to make much of an impression. Here is a girl who needs to pay more attention.
There is a subplot you’ll miss if you blink. Margaret has a girlfriend of several years named Jillian (Diane Farr), who grows jealous of Angelina, throws a tantrum and walks out. This event has no emotional weight. None of the romantic liaisons convey any conviction — save perhaps poor Andrew’s celibate crush on Angelina, which now drives him to masturbate while looking at her hard-core videos. She walks in on him while he’s doing that, explodes in anger and screams: “You love me — just not enough to jerk off to somebody else!”
Now this is a line of dialogue that needs a profound book written about it. Would she be less jealous if he had been watching porn starring somebody else? Why? Given her line of work, shouldn’t she be complimented that with all the porn out there, he chose her? Angelina seems to be disconnected from her body, her self, her work and its consequences. That’s one reason “About Cherry” is such an oddly passive and distant film. If this poor sap of a girl has no other reason to sell herself, shouldn’t she at least care about the money? She doesn’t even seem to notice it much, except that it grows larger.
Prostitution can be a fascinating occupation, allowing personal and financial independence and the kind of entre into the lives of strangers ordinarily available only to doctors, police officers, clergymen and psychiatrists. Prostitutes have inspired some of the most unforgettable characters in fiction. As for all of its effect on Angelina, she might as well have saved herself the wear and tear and stayed in the laundry.
About Cherry (2012)
Directed by: Stephen Elliott
Starring: Ashley Hinshaw, James Franco, Heather Graham, Lili Taylor, Dev Patel, Diane Farr, Jonny Weston, Maya Raines, Elana Krausz, Isaac Fitzberald, Princess Donna, Lorelei Lee
Screenplay by: Stephen Elliott, Lorelei Lee
Production Design by: Michael Grasley
Cinematography by: Darren Genet
Film Editing by: Michelle Botticelli
Costume Design by: Daniella Turner
Set Decoration by: Tyler Kowalski
Art Direction by: Christopher Gaw
Music by: Jeff Russo
MPAA Rating: R for sexual content, including nudity, language and some drug material.
Distributed by: IFC Films
Release Date: September 21, 2012
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