Taking a look at the front cover of Graham Travis’ Wasteland DVD, you can see right away that this is no ordinary adult film. It gives me the impression of an art house flick or a sexy foreign film. The kind you pause at in your Netflix queue, due to the sexy girls on the cover. I approach this film with some excitement as I am a staunch advocate of adding more production value and creativity into this industry. Wasteland is very pretty. Pleasant, moving shots of LA skylines and outdoor landscapes, set the scenes well. The lighting of characters and spaces is well done, modern with a hint of noir. During the sex scenes, moody lighting can obscure the nether regions of the actors at times, but the sex is passionate. Much of your focus will be on the enraptured faces of the two female leads. The lesbian sex is fantastic! Plenty of character background lead up to these scenes. After good slow foreplay, they perfectly culminate into intense orgasm-driven sex. Our two leads, Lily Carter and Lily LeBeau have beautifully contrasting bodies of petite female dimensions. We learn that these two main characters are old friends from Tucson AZ reuniting in LA. One was shy and the other outgoing, but they were best friends in high school. Carter comes to LA to re-connect with LeBeau, but is quickly wrapped up in the strange sexual world of LeBeau’s character. I’m not sure if LeBeau is a prostitute, as no money is ever exchanged, but she fucks seemingly-random guys often and in public spaces, like back alleys and public restrooms. Carter is not thrilled about this and feels hurt after she participates in one of these indiscretions. LeBeau soothes her concerns with hot lesbian sex and some good girl-time playing around in LeBeau’s incredible LA apartment. Sadly, this ends abruptly when they reminisce about their split 5 years ago and other past events. One such event of hanging out with some friends at the lake; LeBeau hooks up with a man that Carter was a interested in, but not committed to, for the evening. Carter feels that LeBeau gets all the guys that Carter is interested in. Again these hurt feelings are consoled later with more lesbian delivered orgasms; after some long dialog developing their story further.
The next evening they head out for a night at a sex club. As a pornographic crescendo, they both witness and finally partake in, public sex; finally joining a sweaty orgy featuring our two female leads and a plethora of hulky gentlemen. The men treat them like the sex objects they have presented themselves to be: slapping, choking, and such. This was an intense and hot scene, as it was full exploitation and penetration of both women; of course ending with cum all over their faces. The eye contact between the girls at the end was a sexy moment in which the girls looked like they had just survived a battle.
This is a movie about Loss; losing friends, losing relatives, and of course, losing innocence. Loss is a very unique undertone for an adult film, indeed. Overall this is a great cinematic effort, putting some serious consideration toward the story and visuals of an adult film. It is definitely flawed at points. The screenplay organization is quite poor. There were some flashbacks and flash-forwards that were confusing. Random shots of a burning house and an old lady’s face; we learn too late of their origins. Graham Travis might be trying to make some metaphorical references with this, but it’s unclear. Clarity is the biggest challenge with the script, as I was confused as to motivations and parts of the story outline.
I hope to see more adult movies like this in the future. It was stimulating to experience the story, good lighting, and cinematography; wrapped around fantastic sex scenes. Better story organization would have really made this an incredible film I will definitely take away some inspiration from this piece of work for my own art.
DVD Note: This was a two disc set. The second disc has plenty of nice features like extended and bonus sex scenes.
Wasteland Official Site: http://www.elegantangel.com/dvdfocus.php?dvdId=14743
BH