Live Nude Girls Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		2.5

Live Nude Girls Blu-ray Movie Review

Sex in the Suburbs.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman February 16, 2013

You have to give Live Nude Girls credit for one thing: within just a couple minutes of the film’s start, we do indeed have a scene of full frontal nudity, first as Georgina (Lora Zane) takes a shower and then, in one of this film’s many sidebars, when she has a rather explicit fantasy involving being sprinkled with flour and “eaten” by a swarthy sous-chef at the restaurant she owns. Later, struggling actress Jamie (Kim Cattrall) remembers a spontaneous assignation with a teenaged Greenpeace volunteer who showed up at her door right after a messy fight with her soon to be ex-husband, and in that scene we’re confronted by the sight of a rather skimpy Frederick’s of Hollywood type teddy that completely reveals Cattrall’s posterior. Yet another flashback shows us some college (mis)adventures between Jamie and roommate Jill (Dana Delany) where the two are clad in garter belts and see through bustiers. Live Nude Girls might seem to be a precursor to Sex in the City (a comparison many are bound to make if for no other reason than the inclusion of Cattrall in both properties), with a bunch of overly articulate women dishing about their lives and (especially) about their sexual escapades, but the film is less focused and frankly not half as amusing as the long running television series. Written and directed by one Julianna Lavin (evidently no relation to Linda, from what I could dig up online), a would be auteur who has this as her only feature film credit, Live Nude Girls occasionally sparks fitfully to life, but it’s awash in so much overdone melodrama and weird shifts in perspective that it’s hard to work up much interest in any of the women at the center of this outing.

The set up for Live Nude Girls is simplicity itself: Jamie is getting hitched for the third time, and Georgina has arranged a little bachelorette sleepover for a quintet of lifelong friends (the film opens with a brief scene depicting the five as kids in 1970, listening to the great Climax song “Precious and Few” as they discuss—well, sex of course). Aside from Georgina, Jamie and Jill, there’s also Jill’s uptight older sister Rachel (Laila Robins) and protypical female nerd Marcy (Cynthia Stevenson). In a punch line that seems ripped from the old Julia Sweeney Saturday Night Live sketch (and long forgotten film) It’s Pat, we ultimately find out that Georgina’s initially unseen partner Chris, whom we have assumed is a male based on the early fantasy Georgina engages in, is in fact a woman (played by a pouty Olivia D’Abo), making Georgina’s fantasy about her male sous-chef supposedly somehow more provocative than it would have otherwise been. (Wasn’t Chris actually the name of the androgynous partner of Pat in the Sweeney outing?)

The film is to be commended for its relatively unvarnished look at a group of lifelong female friends, but at the same time it seems to thinking that people will be shocked—shocked, I say—at the thought of well heeled women actually talking about sex (and even occasionally indulging it), as well as revealing a number of other frankly melodramatic issues. There’s a pleasing veracity to some of the interactions here, especially earlier in the film when all five (Chris only joins the festivities later, and then under duress) are yakking it up amonst themselves. Later in the film we tend to get individual character flashbacks or anecdotes, and the dramatic momentum is seriously slowed at that point.

There are a couple of undeniably funny little bits scattered amongst the otherwise overwrought drama. The first one is arguably the best, a great little scene shown in flashback when Jamie is splitting up with her second husband and has a really disastrously emotional showdown with him. He leaves in disgust and when the doorbell rings, Jamie of course thinks he’s returning to make amends. Instead she’s greeted by a kind of surfer dude (pop star Jeremy Jordan, who arguably was a bigger “star” than any of the leads when this film was released) who is pitching Greenpeace to his neighbors. Greeted by the sight of Jamie is next to no clothing, the kid continues to awkwardly read the Greenpeace selling shpiel, mistakenly thinking that Jamie’s hysterics, which are due to the fight with her soon to be ex, are really about the horrible conditions facing various species Greenpeace is out to protect. The scene continues with an awkward but amusing quick sexual encounter between the two which is then followed up by Jamie contributing to the cause.

The second one is briefer but may strike some as more provocative, if rather outré. Jill has her own flashback which details her dealings with a Mob boss (an uncredited Garry Marshall, believe it or not), a guy with a certain fetish which may remind some viewers of the odd Maggie Gyllenhaal – James Spader outing Secretary. There’s a certain shock value to this particular scene that may recommend it to some viewers, but it may actually strike others as rather quaint in its own way.

Some may have an issue with the kind of homogenous upper middle class white female emphasis here, one that at times seems pretty far removed from most people's realities, especially with regard to Jamie (even if she is portrayed as not especially successful in show business). It would have been better for Lavin to have had a little diversity in her principal cast, as that could have opened the discussion here up into other issues that might have seemed less focused on the salacious aspects of these women's private lives.

Lavin makes a couple of near fatal mistakes along the way as well. She obviously is focusing on the five (or six) main females, and yet she rather disastrously (and briefly) cuts away to a couple of different male characters for no really good reason—the same information could have been gleaned in some other way featuring only the women. And there’s a really pretty offensive stereotypical gay character who is supposed to be hilarious (one supposes, anyway), but who instead invests the film with a smarmy undercutting of its own attempt to be respectful of these disparate characters.

Live Nude Girls Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Live Nude Girls is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Olive Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. There was evidently an old pan and scan Lionsgate DVD release of this title many years ago which apparently was sourced from pretty shoddy looking elements, so the good news here is that the film is presented close to its original aspect ratio as well as in overall very good shape. Quite a bit of this transfer pops really nicely, with excellent clarity and well saturated color. Oddly, however, other sequences are quite soft (a couple of interior bedroom scenes especially), with somewhat less convincing contrast adding to the muddle. Taken as a whole, though, Live Nude Girls looks quite good the vast majority of the time, with an appealingly natural looking transfer that retains a healthy amount of film grain.

Live Nude Girls Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Live Nude Girls features a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mix that offers very good fidelity if not much overt stereo separation. The bulk of the dialogue is pretty centrally placed, as is the occasional source cue and underscore. Everything is very cleanly presented, and the track has no damage of any kind to report. Dynamic range is fairly negligible, as should be expected in a talk heavy film like this one.

Live Nude Girls Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

There are no supplements offered on this Blu-ray disc.

Live Nude Girls Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Live Nude Girls isn't without its pleasures, but it also has too many flaws to ultimately gel well and provide a satisfyingly cohesive experience. The characters are all fairly well drawn, if awfully cliché heavy and stereotyped, and the actresses all do good work here (save perhaps for D'Abo, who just seems like she wants out of the picture from her first scene). Lavin's writing is often quite sharp, but it just as often devolves into rote silliness. This is probably going to appeal mostly to Cattrall or Delany fans who want to see a lesser known title in these actresses' filmography.