Kendo's stock in trade as a pornographer is abstract, dreamy sex scenes, and CHIC (aka CHIC SEX) displays his excesses at their worst. The accompanying Behind the Scenes short subject has Mr. K hanging himself with his own pretentious explanations.
The British helmer's work is distinctive, but in a bad way. As porn in the 21st Century has become focused on maxing out the running time, and presenting complete sex vignettes (or the appearance of start-to-finish real-time episodes), Kendo took the opposite route. As he states, his style is to "splinter" the action, which means endless cross-cutting mixing multiple sequences in a kaleidoscopic way, the sort of shredding that was experimental back in the early '70s (see Henry Jaglom's famous A SAFE PLACE, made before he switched to a more personalized, minimalist approach).
This results in a pretentious, would-be artsy film, in which sustained eroticism is absent and many shots are repeated not once but half a dozen times for effect. I hate this style for many reasons, and as a result dislike Kendo's movies intensely, but fortunately most of them are fetish exercises and easily avoidable.
His fragmented style wastes the talents and beauty of a fine femme cast, many of whom look better in the stills gallery than in the film proper. In particular, buxom Sasha, who has not been given a proper cinematic showcase to date, gets lost in the shuffle.
Evidence of the director's scrambled notions: CHIC opens with a quote attributed to himself: "The sentiment outside only faulters with loss from within". Other than bad spelling this sort of gibberish betrays a self-taught idiot behind the camera, able to spout technical jargon about lenses but without a clue as to how to make a movie.
The British helmer's work is distinctive, but in a bad way. As porn in the 21st Century has become focused on maxing out the running time, and presenting complete sex vignettes (or the appearance of start-to-finish real-time episodes), Kendo took the opposite route. As he states, his style is to "splinter" the action, which means endless cross-cutting mixing multiple sequences in a kaleidoscopic way, the sort of shredding that was experimental back in the early '70s (see Henry Jaglom's famous A SAFE PLACE, made before he switched to a more personalized, minimalist approach).
This results in a pretentious, would-be artsy film, in which sustained eroticism is absent and many shots are repeated not once but half a dozen times for effect. I hate this style for many reasons, and as a result dislike Kendo's movies intensely, but fortunately most of them are fetish exercises and easily avoidable.
His fragmented style wastes the talents and beauty of a fine femme cast, many of whom look better in the stills gallery than in the film proper. In particular, buxom Sasha, who has not been given a proper cinematic showcase to date, gets lost in the shuffle.
Evidence of the director's scrambled notions: CHIC opens with a quote attributed to himself: "The sentiment outside only faulters with loss from within". Other than bad spelling this sort of gibberish betrays a self-taught idiot behind the camera, able to spout technical jargon about lenses but without a clue as to how to make a movie.