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About Cherry (2012)
Ashley Hinshaw, James Franco, Dev Patel, Heather Graham. Directed by Stephen Elliott.
About Cherry would like you to believe that its main character is an empowered woman who, while being introduced to nude modeling by a boyfriend with less-than-noble intentions, embraces it on her own terms without blaming her messed-up family life or her worrying about what her loved ones think. She very quickly drops the boyfriend, flees to San Francisco with her best (guy) friend in tow, hooks up with a lawyer, and begins a career in porn. Anyone questioning her chosen lifestyle is dropped, but alienation from people who don’t accept her decisions is the only consequence the film wants to consider, while its own evidence indicates that there’s more to explore.
Ashley Hinshaw, a very pretty actress, plays Angelina (Cherry is a stage name) like the misunderstood runaway teen in those great MTV hair-metal videos, seemingly smarter about her circumstances than anyone else, riding a wave of brains and awareness slightly above an alcoholic mother and a menacing father. She is humanized by an undying devotion and protectiveness for her younger sister, but when she gets into the car with her guy friend (Dev Patel) and drives away, a few weeks away from graduating high school, she seems to think things between them will always be cool.
Part of you wants to root for her. She seems to have found a working situation that pays well, that she has no moral qualms about, and that provides a respectful, friendly workplace where everyone loves and understands her. This isn’t like those other operations, where the women get taken advantage. When her boyfriend, a cokehead lawyer, asks her what she thinks she’s doing with her life, she drops him, and we feel it’s a good move because, well, because that lawyer is played by James Franco.
But the movie seems to want it both ways (not a double entendre, I swear), driving Angelina and her best friend to a confrontation that seems inevitable but possibly liberating. That it culminates with one of the most baffling responses to “I love you” I have ever heard hints at an attempt to say something meaningful about pornography, about the women who star in it, and about the men who watch it, but the statement doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, and when it’s all over, it feels like the end of those sad MTV videos, where the girl is her own girl now, but has also accepted a life that’s not quite what she set out for.
I realize my condescending tone convicts me as exactly the kind of person the film ridicules, but there are realities of Angelina’s profession that it doesn’t address, as if the woman who chooses that career need only worry about getting paid fairly and being treated nicely. And anyone who would ask her to pause and reconsider can simply go screw himself (okay, that one is intended).
Screw me? No. Screw this movie that aims at some kind of enlightenment but robs its character of really making an empowered choice by actually confronting the issues.
4/10 (IMDb rating)
40/100 (Criticker rating)
Ashley Hinshaw, James Franco, Dev Patel, Heather Graham. Directed by Stephen Elliott.
About Cherry would like you to believe that its main character is an empowered woman who, while being introduced to nude modeling by a boyfriend with less-than-noble intentions, embraces it on her own terms without blaming her messed-up family life or her worrying about what her loved ones think. She very quickly drops the boyfriend, flees to San Francisco with her best (guy) friend in tow, hooks up with a lawyer, and begins a career in porn. Anyone questioning her chosen lifestyle is dropped, but alienation from people who don’t accept her decisions is the only consequence the film wants to consider, while its own evidence indicates that there’s more to explore.
Ashley Hinshaw, a very pretty actress, plays Angelina (Cherry is a stage name) like the misunderstood runaway teen in those great MTV hair-metal videos, seemingly smarter about her circumstances than anyone else, riding a wave of brains and awareness slightly above an alcoholic mother and a menacing father. She is humanized by an undying devotion and protectiveness for her younger sister, but when she gets into the car with her guy friend (Dev Patel) and drives away, a few weeks away from graduating high school, she seems to think things between them will always be cool.
Part of you wants to root for her. She seems to have found a working situation that pays well, that she has no moral qualms about, and that provides a respectful, friendly workplace where everyone loves and understands her. This isn’t like those other operations, where the women get taken advantage. When her boyfriend, a cokehead lawyer, asks her what she thinks she’s doing with her life, she drops him, and we feel it’s a good move because, well, because that lawyer is played by James Franco.
But the movie seems to want it both ways (not a double entendre, I swear), driving Angelina and her best friend to a confrontation that seems inevitable but possibly liberating. That it culminates with one of the most baffling responses to “I love you” I have ever heard hints at an attempt to say something meaningful about pornography, about the women who star in it, and about the men who watch it, but the statement doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, and when it’s all over, it feels like the end of those sad MTV videos, where the girl is her own girl now, but has also accepted a life that’s not quite what she set out for.
I realize my condescending tone convicts me as exactly the kind of person the film ridicules, but there are realities of Angelina’s profession that it doesn’t address, as if the woman who chooses that career need only worry about getting paid fairly and being treated nicely. And anyone who would ask her to pause and reconsider can simply go screw himself (okay, that one is intended).
Screw me? No. Screw this movie that aims at some kind of enlightenment but robs its character of really making an empowered choice by actually confronting the issues.
4/10 (IMDb rating)
40/100 (Criticker rating)
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