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Arriving about two years after a series of revelations brought to public predatory behavior that’s been at the core of the film industry since its inception, Kire Paputts’ Toronto-based indie The Last Porno Show offers an unusual insight into when method acting becomes creepy, unprofessional, and unacceptable. Paputts is fully aware of what he’s doing in a film that is unafraid itself to peddle in the sleaze its budding cinema exhibitor dabbles in, gleefully earning its adults-only rating in its opening shot. It’s a magnum opus of I Am Cuba-esque magnitude where a camera travels from the porn screen, over the heads of the community that make up the cinema to its patron who died doing what he loved, manning the cash register behind a concession stand.
Wayne (Nathaniel Chadwick), the man’s son, is an aspiring actor with a day job, and hungry enough for any role. When he receives word from his attorney that the grimy cinema is in a gentrifying neighborhood, he returns to his old home–an apartment above the theater–and reconnects with the more disturbing aspects of his childhood. Raised by dad Al (Christian Aldo), there’s a good reason to be estranged–unlike Rachel Mason’s parents he’s not protected from the realities of running a hardcore adult business. Played mostly for laughs, The Last Porno Show makes an interesting companion to Mason’s personal documentary Circus of Books (due to appear on Netflix soon), where her family grew up as a curious and yet seemingly conservative Jewish family. While the Masons became distributors, Al goes one step further, performing in pornography while is his son hides in the next room. Later he reconnects with an actress who has taken up residence in the apartment next door.
The Last Porno Show enters truly uncomfortable territory when Wayne nails an audition that requires more nudity than one should expect for a film that will feature live sex. He sets about trying to understand his father, including directing a film of his own life that if it were not played for sometimes crude laughs might be something one might have found in an early Atom Egoyan film.
The Last Porno Show premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival.
TIFF Review: ‘The Last Porno Show’ is a Black Comedy Peddling in Sleaze and Gentrification
