American Pie Presents: Girls' Rules (2020)

Director Mike Elliott's juvenile sex comedy made an odd appearance - it was the 9th installment of the entire American Pie franchise series (beginning in 1999), including both theatrical feature films and direct-to video spin-off releases:

After many years of teenage sex comedies, by the 2020s, permissiveness of sexual situations on-screen with exploitative objectification of females was replaced by a new sanitized puritanism. One prime example was this low-budget, unnecessary and superfluous, direct-to-video, stand-alone sequel - a gender-reversed or flipped version of the franchise's earlier films. To appeal to progressive sensitivities, the sex-hungry, racially-diverse protagonists in this very tame film were four teenaged female girlfriends. They made a pact with each other (dubbed "girls' rules") by the time of MORP (the school's 'Sadie-Hawkins' prom - spelled backwards), including:

1) setting a goal to fix their romantic lives
2) supporting their fellow women, and
3) they would all be "accountability" partners ("and we won't let each other get away with our usual s--t")

In the small town of East Great Falls, Michigan, four sex-obsessed female buddies at the local HS sought to have sex in their senior year - each one of them paralleled the all-white male characters from the original series:

Females in This Film		Analog Males From the Earliest American Pie films
Cute Annie Watson (Madison Pettis) with College-Bound Boyfriend Jason (Zayne Emory)		Jim (Jason Biggs)
Outspoken Stephanie Stifler (Lizze Broadway) - The Distant Cousin of Steven; Lacrosse Player		Steve Stifler (Seann William Scott)
Insecure Kayla (Piper Curda) Jealous of Her Boyfriend Tim (Camaron Engels)		Kevin (Thomas Ian Nicholas)
Overweight, Smart Michelle West (Natasha Behnam) - Sex Toy Expert and Masturbator, Obsessed with President JFK's Speeches		Finch (Eddie Kaye Thomas)

During their twisted misadventures in this rebooted scenario, there was very minimal nudity during covered up sex-acts, but with all the requisite gross-out jokes, a predictable sit-com plot, and lots of explicit swear words, without much realistic human emotion or feeling until the film's final third.

In the film's opening to the tune of "Hot Stuff," virginal Annie Watson (wearing a long trenchcoat and pink high-heels) experienced a series of mishaps trying to enter her boyfriend Jason Sawyer's second-story bedroom window to have sex for the first time before he left for college at Michigan State early the next morning. When climbing over the home's iron-spiked fence, she wedged her panties, then dirtied herself in a mud-puddle. Once in the room, she prepared with a blue prophylactic dental dam - to prevent transmission of STDs - that became lodged in her throat during oral sex. After being interrupted by Jason's parents when they showed up (with an apple pie to celebrate his acceptance to college) in the midst of them having sex, she fled and fell backwards out of the 2nd story window into a row of bushes.

Wielding a whip and handcuffs, leather-clad, tough-chick dominatrix Stephanie made her high-school Principal Shankman (Robert Peters) her sex slave in order to seek #MeToo justice. In the high school's dark basement. During his "retirement party," she had tricked him in order to film him and incriminate him for sexual harrassment.

Other various sex scenes (implied) in the rom-com were located in a teen male's bedroom, in the school's chemistry lab, in the school library, in a closet, in a restroom toilet stall, in a college dorm room, in a school classroom, on a washing machine, and in a tent on the football field. The multiple masturbation scenes included remote-controlled vibrating underwear, cybersex, various sex toys and aids including ben wa metal balls and JFK-shaped dildos. Two scenes that didn't make the final cut included a topless scene, and a male full-frontal scene (with a prosthetic).

The lustful girls ended up competitively seeking to have sex with the same ideal nice guy Grant (Darren Barnet), a new transfer student in town whose horny mother Ellen (Sara Rue) was appointed as the high school's new principal. All of the hookups in the film were basically hetero-normative, rather than including the many diverse sexual relations (i.e., gay or trans) that could have been included.

PVT CHAT (2020)

Writer/director Ben Hozie's dramatic (and psychological) erotic thriller, unrated due to graphic nudity (including unsimulated male masturbation and lots of female toplessness and bare breasts) was about the world of Internet "web cam girls." The rise of this underworld subculture of Internet sex (especially during the COVID pandemic, with lockdowns and the decline of traditional dating sites) was also explored in the intensely scary horror and sci-fi film Cam (2018) from director Daniel Goldhaber. This 2020 film, subtitled "A Romance about Freedom, Fantasy, Death, Friendship," and with the tagline: "Do you want to go private?", skirted the edges of grubby sleaziness although it attempted to be honestly insightful and serious about its central transactional relationship.

The scruffy, lonely male protagonist Jack (Peter Vack) who was addicted to online porn and gambling (blackjack), spent much of his life in his small NYC apartment. Jack's borderline finances aggravated his landlord Henry (Atticus Cain). During the film, Jack was about to be evicted (after late rent payments), while new tenants were planning on moving into his windowless, one-room Chinatown apartment after renovations (painting and installation of a skylight).

Jack spent what little money he had on one-to-one video sessions with "cam girls," online gambling, and erotic massages, while dining on gas stove-boiled cheap ramen noodles. From Jack's point-of-view, he soon became loyal to and obsessed by one of the "cam girls" - a black leather-clad model named Scarlet (Julia Fox) who claimed that she lived in San Francisco. During private online video chats within her red-hued room showing off dildos and sex toys hanging on her wall, she advertised herself as an abusive dominatrix who would instruct him as her sex slave to masturbate in front of her. She forced him to pretend to extinquish her cigarette on his tongue.

He falsely boasted to her that he was a wealthy NY high-tech genius who had developed a new digitizing app or nano- "chip" known as See Stream. He described it as a subscription-based service that would help people to communicate their thoughts. Later in the film, he promised that she would share in the profits as a beta-tester.

The film's turning point came when he happened to spot Scarlet inside of a nearby Chinatown market-shop purchasing beer, and he trailed after her onto the rainy streets. That evening, when he messaged Scarlet online and challenged her about seeing her in the shop, she temporarily disappeared from the Internet private chat site. He became determined to locate her, and to establish a real-life personal relationship.

At the same time, Jack became reacquainted with his ex-lover Emma KaVas (Nikki Belfiglio), who was showing her unique art work in a studio. When he returned to her apartment for the evening after her show, during Emma's brief absence to purchase a bottle of wine, he logged on with Scarlet on Emma's laptop in her bedroom, who accepted his request for a live session - it was the first time they had spoken since he had spotted her. She claimed that he had seen her doppelganger ("I'll bet she wasn't as hot as me!") and that she had never been in NYC. He masturbated during their short chat into one of Emma's books - a copy of Ulysses by James Joyce, and were interrupted as Emma returned. Afterwards, he hurriedly left her place to return to his own apartment and resume online time with Scarlet. She showed him some of her paintings, and he was impressed by her talent. As part of a "game," he proposed that if he could take a picture or video of her in New York, that he would take her on a romantic vacation to Paris.

During further online sessions between Scarlet and Jack, it was revealed that Scarlet had a boyfriend named Duke (Keith Poulson). He bragged about acquiring a liquor license for his dream of opening up a theatre. The two conspired to take advantage of Jack's alleged wealth as a Silicon Valley-type entrepreneur, in order to fund Duke's enterprise. Scarlet took advantage of Jack's romantic interest in her by pretending to affectionately care about him (and fleece him of his money), and began to show real emotion to him. By this time, Jack had begun to switch roles with Scarlet - he ordered her to repeat phrases such as: "I have the hottest f--king mouth that can make any cock rock hard," and strip off her clothes during a session of mutual masturbation.

To track his fantasy "cam girl" down and meet her in person, Jack was able to enlist the assistance of two unstable and troublesome new low-life friends - Larry (Buddy Duress) and his apartment's hired painter named Will (Kevin Moccia) whom he met during renovations of his apartment. Larry spotted Scarlet in the Chinatown bodega and for $500, he notified Jack of her apartment's address, where she lived with Duke. During a cringe-worthy sequence, Jack stalked after her, stealthily entered Duke's apartment and explored Scarlet's makeshift studio set up for her chat sessions (and checked her emails on her computer). He was forced to hide under their sofa undetected when they unexpectedly came home, and realized Scarlet had a contentious and unstable relationship with Duke. He fled when they retreated to their back bedroom.

To his surprise, Scarlet phoned him once he returned to his apartment and asked to fly from San Francisco to New York to meet up with him in person. In the next instant, she was at his apartment door, admitting that she had never lived or been in San Francisco. After he took a picture of her, she reminded him of his promise to take her to Paris. They kissed, and then slept together in his bed (without having sex). The next morning - the same day Jack was to vacate his apartment, he told her that it felt "like Christmas morning." The unsuspecting Jack didn't realize that during her short time with him, she secretly transferred $10,000 from his bank account to her cam site profile. To cover up, she told him that she had ordered two plane tickets for them to travel to Paris.

Scarlet and Jack's First In-Person Meeting

As he was checking his ATM bank balance on the sidewalk outside the apartment, he asked her: "Should we make love here or wait until we land in Paris?" before discovering she had robbed him. She fled in a vehicle with Duke, who congratulated her on pulling off the heist without even having to make love with Jack. The bank refused to reverse the fraudulent charges, because he had a record of making multiple past purchases at the cam girls site. In frustration, Jack destroyed his laptop.

During a final meeting between the two of them in Jack's temporary quarters, a cheap motel room, Scarlet admitted that she had stolen his funds for Duke and didn't have the money to pay him back. When she stated, "I thought you were rich," Jack confessed that he had lied about his wealth to impress her and cause her to like him.

In their first attempt to reconcile by having in-person sex (with Jack receiving oral sex), Jack was unable to maintain an erection. The only way to turn Jack on was for Scarlet to take charge and revert to her dominatrix role. During her "game," she aroused him by treating him as her sex slave. As she sat back and smoked a cigarette, she instructed him to stroke himself to become hard. The film ended with the two not touching each other, but masturbating together side by side.

The Film's Final No-Touch Sex Sequence

Simple Passion (2020, Fr.) (aka Passion Simple)

Female French-Lebanese co-writer/director Danielle Arbid's explicit 96-minute French film of amour fou and romantic obsession was adapted from Annie Ernaux's sexually-frank 1991 novel of the same name. It was an intense and impressionistic study of crippling sexual desire within a one-sided, futile and unequal relationship. It followed an emotionally-distant, intellectually-dull and completely-incompatible married man and aloof bad boy, who mesmerized a stubborn, needy female romantic. Although Hélène was a strong feminist, she regressed by inventing an intoxicating but non-existent, fantasy bond between them during repetitive day-dreams and increasingly infrequent sexual visits.

In the unrated film's opening in the office of an unseen psychiatrist (Slimane Dazi), a close-up focused on the face of divorced, 40-ish, liberal-minded Parisian university lecturer Hélène (French-Swiss actress Laetitia Dosch), during her flashbacked confessional of the previous eight months. She had begun an affair with a male whom she first met at a dinner party in Oporto. Hélène was reciting how and when she had entered into the promiscuous, passionate and erotic relationship with tattooed, surly young Russian diplomat Aleksandr (Ukrainian-born ballet star Sergei Polunin), an Embassy official who was cheating on his wife back in Moscow whenever he was out of town.

The unresponsive, misogynistic and anti-intellectual Aleksandr was often drunk on Scotch and drove a luxury Audi about the city, while Hélène was obviously the smarter and more curious of the two whose research included studying the work of Restoration-era 17th century English playwright Aphra Behn.

During her destructive, destabilizing, loveless, ill-advised and addictive affair as his mistress, she often spent hours having clandestine, torrid, daytime, brightly-lit sexual trysts with Aleksandr, while juggling her duties as a single mother to her young schoolboy son Paul (Lou-Teymour Thion), when the boy wasn't with her ex-husband (Grégoire Colin). Often left on-call and awaiting Aleksandr's desires, Hélène's evasive lover often did not return her plaintive voice-mail messages, or keep his promised appointments with her.

With an interest in poetry and movies, she often spent time with her best friend Anita (Caroline Ducey, known for her X-rated appearance as Marie in Catherine Breillat's Romance (1999, Fr.)). They attended a showing of director Alain Resnais' Hiroshima, Mon Amour (1959, Fr.) about an affair in the destroyed WWII Japanese city between two suitors: French actress Elle (Emmanuelle Riva) with a married Japanese architect known as Lui (Eiji Okada).

Numerous raw sexual scenes illustrated the many fornicating escapades of the uninhibited couple who shared physical intimacy in many different positions (and with full-frontal male nudity), but without substantial or meaningful and intimate verbal conversations or emotional satisfaction between the two.

As the erotic drama concluded, the disappointed, panicky and devastated Hélène began to realize that her affair was ending, and she became more irritable, irresponsible, unfocused at her work, detached, agitated, and worried about her future, while ignoring or being absent from her young tween son. She also neglected her academic career, students, and her own research.

365 Days (2020, Pol.) (aka 365 Dni)

Co-directors Barbara Bialowas and Tomasz Mandes helmed this unrated, controversial Polish romantic dramedy (a combination of romantic comedy and drama), with themes of romantic obsession and exploitation, misogynistic behavior including forced physical/sexual abuse, and eroticization of male domination over a captive and temperamental female. The female-directed, soft-core porn, erotic drama seen on Netflix was presented in three languages - Polish, Italian, and English.

It was an adaptation of the first part of Blanka Lipińska’s erotic novel trilogy, with two sequels (based on the other parts of the trilogy) coming two years later.

[Note: There were two lesser follow-up films in 2022: 365 Days: This Day (2022), and The Next 365 Days (2022), with the same director and two stars.]

It was often seen as a rip-off or sexy rendition of both Pretty Woman (1990) and of the "50 Shades of Grey" franchise series (2015-2018), with a number of explicit sex scenes, including female masturbation, fellatio on an airplane with a stewardess (Ewelina Plizga), a shower scene, a lengthy yacht seduction, and a high-rise (against the windows) sex scene. The 'beauty and the beast' tale was considered highly offensive by many viewers (who watched it streaming on Netflix) due to its portrayal of forced rape, the Stockholm syndrome, its romanticization of non-consensual love, etc.

In the film's plot (and opening sequence) at a seaside castle, gangster son Don Massimo Torricelli (Michele Morrone) was viewing a female at the rugged coastline through binoculars while his father (Gianni Parisi) was conducting Mafia business on the rooftop. Massimo's father warned: "Oh my son, you have to be careful. Beautiful women are heaven for the eyes and hell for the soul." He replied: "And purgatory for the wallet." Suddenly, sniper gunshot killed his father and seriously wounded Massimo in the abdomen. He went unconscious with dream-like hallucinations of the girl on the coast - and subsequently became obsessed with her. As a result of the assassination-murder, Massimo was forced to take over the ruthless dealings of his Sicilian Mafia family, the Torricellis.

Five years later, 29 year-old brunette Laura Biel (Anna Maria Sieklucka), a hotel sales-ad executive in Warsaw (Poland), was celebrating her birthday in Sicily, Italy with her boyfriend Martin (Mateusz Łasowski) and her best friend Olga (Magdalena Lamparska). There, she was kidnapped and drugged by Don Massimo and taken to his villa. He explained to her that he had become obsessed with her after seeing her on the coast through binoculars a half-decade earlier.

Massimo told Laura (his nickname for her was "Baby Girl") that his intention was to keep her as a prisoner for 365 days (one year) until she fell in love with him. If she didn't succumb to his love, he would release her. During a shower scene, he walked over to her and asked about her interest in his penis:

Do you want anything from me, or are you just looking? Why are you looking at it? Do you want to touch it?

Although Massimo nobly promised to never force sex on her without her permission, he immediately broke his promise (by fondling her breasts), while at the same time, Laura acted provocatively to tease him while also resisting his advances.

He pressured her to agree to his demands by threatening to kill her family, showing her photographs of her boyfriend Martin's infidelity, and telling her a breakup letter was delivered to Martin on her behalf.

Hence followed a series of sexual sequences between Laura and Massimo:

• at a hotel in Rome, he cuffed her arms and legs to a bed, and then forced her to watch as he received oral sex from another woman across from him on another bed, in front of a large poster of a fierce lion
• on a yacht after she almost drowned, they experienced a lengthy series of sexual encounters

Laura (Anna Maria Sieklucka) with Massimo (Michele Morrone)

As the film progressed, complications arose when Laura's ex-boyfriend Martin reappeared during a time when Massimo seemed to abandon Laura, although his excuse was that he was wounded in further Mafia conflict. When he proposed to her, she accepted - and kept it a secret that she was pregnant.

The film ended with Laura the probable victim of Mafia violence inside a coastal tunnel when she didn't emerge from the other side. Had she been lost or not?