Review: Elektra Luxx

Elektra Luxx is director Sebastian Gutierrez’s follow up to his 2009 film Women In Trouble and once again stars Carla Gugino as porn star, Elektra Luxx. The sequel follows now retired and pregnant Elektra Luxx adapapting to live outside the industry. However this is not a quiet retirement like Elektra had planned. 

Despite no signs of a DVD release, Elektra Luxx was unusually broadcast on British TV and has been gaining various different responses. Many people seeing the film are disappointed, having expected a crude sex comedy, however Elektra Luxx is a far more intelligent and witty comedy-drama. The film ranges from laugh out loud to funny to touchingly sad with help from the wondeful Carla Gugino’s performance. Gugino is phenomenal in this – she is truly captivating, it’s extremely difficult to not look when she’s on screen. She’s supported by an excellent cast ranging from appearances from Timothy Olyphant (who’s incredibly underused) and Joseph Gordon-Levitt to an unforgettable cameo from Julianne Moore.

Unfortunately, even with these excellent performances, Gutierrez’s script is a mess at points. It ranges from incoherent to chaotic on several occasions, with some extremely irrelevant scenes. There’s a completely irrelevant subplot about a two best friend porn actresses, one madly in love with the other – which is neither funny or coherent with the rest of the film. Although, highly enjoyable – there’s also a rather bizarre song and dance number from Gugino – doesn’t make much sense but it’s all great fun. There’s also some fun scenes as Elektra teaches her class “How To Act Like A Porn Star in Bed” and Joseph Gordon Levitt’s porn aficionado, Bert Rodriguez’s vlogs that are constantly interrupted by his mother. There’s enough of these really fun scenes scattered about to make you ignore the craziness of the script and to still enjoy the film.

The dialogue is excellent at points. Julianne Moore’s cameo in particular displays this – Moore plays The Virgin Mary, come to comfort Elektra. Elektra is stunned and asks “Are you the Virgin Mary?” who replies “Well just Mary, the virgin part’s a bit overstated”. Unfortunately, Moore’s role is not much more than a cameo, like Timothy Olyphant’s. His character is one of the most interesting in the film and is only used for two-three scenes, having no more than about 10 minutes screen time, however he’s likely to feature more in the third film Women in Ecstasy.

So besides from some issues with the script, Elektra Luxx still manages to be a weird, wonderful and sexy film  with some great fun performances. And it’s one of my favourites of the year so far.