I’m not going to say that I was looking forward to this film in any reasonable fashion; after how disastrously its predecessor turned out, that’d just be dishonest of me. But between the thoughtful examination of sexual liberation in X, and me re-examining my understanding of films primarily targeted at women off the back of How To Please A Woman… I’m at least open to the idea that this film could be a little easier to sit through. And to a degree, it is… but only in one specific aspect. Everything else has somehow taken a turn for the even worse.
It seems that the filmmakers have definitely heard the myriad of criticisms levelled at the first film, as there’s quite a few moments that exist solely to bring Michele Morrone’s Massimo to task for the shit he’s pulled. Both in the dramatic scenes and even during the sex, Anna-Maria Sieklucka’s Laura shows more agency in how things go, to the point of directly confronting Massimo for his domineering and Stockholm-laden behaviour. It puts the film in better standing, as it solidifies that these features exist for escapist titillation, so it’s worthwhile to address aspects that likely prevented audiences from engaging with it on those terms the first time around.
However, while that improvement is definitely appreciated, how it ultimately turns out here is a bit like a heart transplant… with no replacement organ. They’ve removed the most damaged part of the production, granted, but they haven’t actually replaced it with anything; it’s just a hollow cavity now. It’s almost impressive how determined this film to have absolutely nothing of importance take place on-screen, considering it takes a solid fifty minutes for the actual plot to start up in this 109-minute feature.
To give a clearer idea of the level of laziness we’re dealing with here, the previous film ended on a cliffhanger, with Laura in a car crash in a tunnel. Not only is this resolved entirely between-films, but it apparently also resulted in a miscarriage that… maybe(?) factors into the ending but nothing else.
And even when things do start happening, it’s the blandest kind of telenovela schlock that can’t even be entertaining in its ludicrousness. Long story short, after Massimo cheats on Laura (to the surprise of absolutely no-one), Laura then runs off with… *sigh*… Massimo’s identical twin brother Adriano (also played by Michele Morrone), and they basically spend all their time doing the same horizontal hustle that her and Massimo were doing, just with slightly different set dressing. Even when compared to the After films, which also feel like colossal pretences just to get the two leads to keep having sex on-camera, it is astonishing just how much nothing is happening here.
Beyond the faintest facsimile of a plot this thing is sporting, it’s just the same pornographic music video shit from the first film, only it’s somehow even more difficult to take seriously, even as softcore. Bartek Cierlica’s cinematography and Marcin Drewnowski’s editing got on my nerves pretty damn quickly with just how soulless and textbook ‘the soundtrack is doing all the heavy lifting so just stick to supporting it’ the visuals are, and the soundtrack itself is just as vacuous. Michele Morrone thankfully isn’t performing his own soundtrack this time around (save for a singular track later on), but between the Ed Sheeran soundlike in Oskar Cyms, the Weeknd soundalike that shows this series still trying to chase that Fifty Shades aesthetic and failing miserably, and the absolute blandness of the rest of it, it’s somehow even more irritating to listen to.
This doesn’t even feel like something meant to be watched for ‘the articles’. It’s more like something that’d be playing in the background of a swinger party while everyone’s passing the keys around, it blends that steadfastly into the wallpaper. It removes one of the more heinous aspects of the original film, but offers next to nothing in its place, instead creating something that manages to offer less plot and character development than actual porn. And because of how basic-bitch the production values are, even the softcore scenes (which make up about 80-90% of the total feature) are less-than-enjoyable. It’s quite the accomplishment to immediately improve on the ickiness of the original, and yet somehow come out with a follow-up that is even worse to sit through. I’d rather take a golf ball to the genitals, quite frankly, and I am most assuredly not looking forward to the threequel coming out later this year.
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