Girls Lie

I'm not sure what to make of Girls Lie. It teeters precariously on the line that Porn Of The Dead stomped across and that Re-Penetrator skipped happily over: the line between porn that is meant to turn you on and porn that is meant to make you uncomfortable. Where those movies chose to do it with visual effects, Eon McKai's new alt-effort seems to take the novel approach of making the girls themselves unlikeable. It's hard to tell what McKai is up to -- is he really a stunted woman-hater who just feels like all women are untrustworthy and dishonest, or is he just being so detached and ironic that the movie comes out oozing discomfort because he wanted it to? In short, if he is making some kind of statement, what the hell is it?

A related question: porn is material designed to appeal to your prurient interest, to get you off. If it stops getting you off, and if in fact it appears to be designed to make you too uncomfortable to get off, what is it if it's not porn anymore, and what are you doing if you're still jacking off to it?

Let me start off by saying that all of the girls in the movie are hot, if you like the alt-girl type (I do); Charlotte Stokely is a baby-faced blonde with freckles and a big ass, Dana DeArmond is a brunette with a slender body and a pretty face, Pixie Pearl is a tall, narrow, tattooed wraith with big eyes, and Riley Mason is a gamine little thing with black hair and a young body. All their sex scenes are pretty good taken on their own merits, but it's the rest of the movie that sets the bar.

Each girl is shown first having sex with a boyfriend and then again with someone else -- Riley with a costar in a porn movie, Pixie with a black guy, Dana with (apparently) a slacker boyfriend, and Charlotte with a trick she picked up on the street. The lies (in case you wanted to keep track): Charlotte's boyfriend doesn't know she's hooking for drug money and rent; Riley's boyfriend doesn't know she's in porn; Dana's husband doesn't know she's an insatiable nymphomaniac; and Pixie, who has gotten pregnant by either Zak or Julius, is preparing to lie to one or both of them about it.

As I said, the sex is pretty good; for me, the only problem is that Charlotte is a drug-addled halfwit with a blank stare and a voice I want to slap, Dana is aloof and almost cold and radiates the superiority of the nerd who is smarter than you but less socially adept, and if Pixie had sleeves on at all, they would be decorated with her crushing isolation. Riley is the only one of the bunch who isn't intrinsically offputting.

I admit freely that my impressions of them come from other movies as much as from Girls Lie, and it's my own personal reactions to the girls that are coming out here, but McKai doesn't make it any better with his scripting, which consists of a lot of uncomfortable situations that stretch out too long -- Pixie telephoning both potential fathers over and over and leaving messages saying "We have to talk;" Riley getting ready for her porn shoot -- douching alone, submitting to Tom Byron's paws; Charlotte's awkward colloquy with the guy who picked her up off the streetcorner; and Dana's second boyfriend trying to nap while she basically begs him to pay attention to her.

Girls Lie has an interesting structure, mirrored front to back so Charlotte's first scene is the first in the movie, followed by Dana, Pixie and Riley, then the cheating scenes in reverse order, so Charlotte-as-whore closes the film out. I don't know that it has any impact in terms of the overall meaning of the movie, but it's a little symmetry, at least. The cinematography is good, too (good enough to call it cinematography instead of just camerawork), shot in a jumpy, grainy hyperreal style that adds to the anomie of the whole thing.

The standout feature of Girls Lie, though (aside from the sex), is the soundtrack, a jagged, almost schizophrenic array of tracks from punk and alt rock bands, all of whom are probably Eon McKai's Myspace friends, as well as some very skillful uses of silence and ambient noise, all of which enhances (and partly creates) the personality of the movie. I'm not sure if I actually like the personality of the movie, but whether or not I do, it's definitely a strong one.

I'm not sure what to make of Girls Lie. It teeters precariously on the line that Porn Of The Dead stomped across and that Re-Penetrator skipped happily over: the line between porn that is meant to turn you on and porn that is meant to make you uncomfortable. Where those movies chose to do it with visual effects, Eon McKai's new alt-effort seems to take the novel approach of making the girls themselves unlikeable. It's hard to tell what McKai is up to -- is he really a stunted woman-hater who just feels like all women are untrustworthy and dishonest, or is he just being so detached and ironic that the movie comes out oozing discomfort because he wanted it to? In short, if he is making some kind of statement, what the hell is it?... Read the Full Review!