Gia; A Portrait of a Pornstar is a very unique adult film. It's a drama, telling the story of Gia's rise to fame in the adult industry, and subsequent destruction. The thing to really keep in mind with this film that isn't really explained too well (at least I didn't "get it" right away) is that this is *in no way based upon the real life story of any one individual. Instead, the producers and directors of Gia took bits and pieces from true stories of adult movie stars that they knew and put those into this movie, to make up the different scenes and events that happened. So while it is based upon true events, they're taken from many different people.

The style of the movie is very unique, as well; not just the plot. It's interwoven with basically 4 types of scenes; sex scenes, interviews, black & whites and regular plot scenes. The majority of this 3 hour movie is the sex scenes. And they are incredibly typical, vanilla, almost boring porno sex scenes. They are over-vocalized (The girls moaning even when they're just fingering another girl or giving a hand job or something -- this is one of the biggest porn pet peeves I have.), there is one scene where it's apparent (though they could have 2 identical ones) they shared a jelly dildo, there's no condoms and the sex is just ... plain. Plus, there's wwaayyy more sex than plot furthering scenes and the sex scenes do nothing to further the plot. They could have made this film with absolutely no sex and it would not be worse for it. Probably better.

The interview scenes are pretty cool. The producers went out and interviewed adult film stars such as Janine and Ron Jeremy at the AVN Awards and then spliced it into the film. As the stars reminisced about people they knew having drug problems and such these interviews really add realism to the movie. Due to the interviews I spent a good portion of this movie going "Who's it about???" but reminding myself it's just based on true events; it's not a biographical film at all.

The plot furthering scenes are simply acted out scenes about her life; Gia's that is. Showing her getting into the adult industry and so forth. I really, really wish they would have spent more time on this aspect of the film. It all went so quickly because the sex scenes take up so much time! (There are 8 whole sex scenes in the film which leave little room for everything else.) A lot of themes are merely hinted at in this movie, alluded to by some black & white scenes, by items sitting around instead of directly showing it. This does add to the movie, however it really makes a person think during it.

The production quality is really what makes this movie something else, however. For me, it's the only shining star. The sets are great, and are made unique to this movie; they're not just stock sets. The music (when there is music) is awesome and unique; however there's really no music in the whole movie, not even during the sex scenes. During the sex scenes all you hear is the women over-vocalizing and the main actress Sunny Leone saying "fuck" all the time. She says "fuck" so much throughout this movie I don't want to hear the word again for weeks!

The cinemetography is another awesome part of this movie. The use of the black & white scenes, some very unique angles and props makes this one of the best adult films, cinemetographically I've ever seen. However, the sex still ruins it for me, and I will not be watching it again.

I was so excited for this film. It's unique, it's by Vivid my favorite porn company.. an quite simply .. it looked really good! However, I was so disappointed that by minute 15 I was already fast forwarding and skipping parts of scenes. However, I want to make it clear that this does not make it a bad movie! It's just not *my kind* of movie.