Gia, Portrait of a Porn Star, is a dramatic parody that is loosely based on the real life of 1970’s fashion supermodel Gia Carangi (This story is also told in the 1998 biographical film called Gia, starring Angelina Jolie). This Vivid production takes creative license and reinterprets the story of Gia’s rapid ascent to stardom in the world of porn, and her equally rapid fall from grace to the depths of despair. As her story unfolds, we learn more about her life through interviews with some giants in the industry: Ron Jeremy, Randy West, Debi Diamond, Wesley Emerson, etc. These interviews provide her back story, and the testimonials give the film a documentary style feeling. While the interviews are a clever tool to inject additional information into the storyline, there are simply too many and several last much longer than necessary.

The movie is plot driven and a long 3 hours, which might not appeal to everyone. As storylines go, it’s the familiar story of a bright star that burns out prematurely. Without revealing spoilers, the ending is intentionally dramatic and can be somewhat of a mood killer. Personally, I watch porn to be turned on, not turned off, and a depressing ending is a definite turn off. The story begins with Gia questioning her future and ultimately her decision to enter the world of modeling. Her modeling work quickly transitions to nudity and pornography, not that Gia is opposed to it. We soon get the first glimpse of drug use as Gia is seen smoking an unknown substance to relax herself before her first porn shoot. Unfortunately, the movie never builds on this premise. Instead, the next time her drug use is mentioned, it’s already a serious issue as revealed during an attempted intervention. There are no further hints or attempts to gradually build up this part of the plot for the viewer.

The movie features a total of eight sex scenes that range in length from 6 to 22 minutes and include three girl on girl and five heterosexual scenes. For the most part, the sex scenes were fairly enjoyable, although some of the longer ones would have benefited with a little more editing as they had a tendency to drag on a bit. The girl on girl scenes are all fairly similar and include a lot of kissing, oral, and fingering. Each of these scenes also includes the use of toys such as glass wands, a jelly dildo (seriously, jelly?), and a vibrator. Gia (Sonny Leone) even experiences double penetration with toys from her girlfriend (Tori Black) in what is probably the best scene the movie has to offer. The two actresses have amazing chemistry together and appear to enjoy one another.

The heterosexual scenes are also all fairly similar to one another and mostly vanilla, although one scene includes anal. What’s a little unusual is that three of the heterosexual scenes are filmed as porn shoots within the movie and have absolutely nothing to do with the plot or main characters. For me, this defeats the purpose of watching a porn with a storyline. I want to get attached to the characters and enjoy watching them have sex. Although these three scenes were enjoyable to watch, it was no different than watching a gonzo. These “characters” didn’t even have names, or at least none that I could remember.

The other two heterosexual scenes involved Gia and her porn star boyfriend, Dirty (Ariel King). The first is a six-minute blowjob in what is supposed to be Gia’s first porn scene. There is no PIV and it’s obviously a quick scene. Their second scene together is again in the premise of filming a porn scene, but this time it is after they have broken up as a couple. For me, this scene was extremely uncomfortable to watch as you could tell Gia was obviously not enjoying herself and didn’t want to have sex with him. In the end, he comes in her face, despite her pleas for him not to.

The dramatic performances in this film are mediocre at best, and that’s being generous. The dialogue is contrived and often delivered as if reading a script during a rehearsal. Fortunately, the performances during the sex scenes are much better. The technical quality of the film was lacking as well. In several scenes, particularly at the beginning of the movie, the background noise was more audible than the dialogue. Several scenes were also filmed using hand held cameras, which can add realism to a documentary style film. However, the framing often cut off people’s heads and sex scenes often included disembodied close-ups at awkward viewing angles. Scene transitions were also an issue. Rather than actually trying to edit and piece together scenes properly, the film resorted to using a blur effect between scenes that quickly became annoying because of it overuse. One area I thought the movie portrayed well was the physical transformation of Gia during the course of the movie. In the beginning, she is an attractive if somewhat plain looking young woman. As she enters the world of modeling and porn, she transforms into a beautiful starlet and is almost unrecognizable compared to her former innocent self. Then towards the end of the movie, she undergoes a final transformation into a shadow of her former self. All of the beauty and glamor she once took for granted now gone.

The film is a mixed bag but does at least succeed in offering some decent, albeit vanilla, sex scenes. The plot is very believable but the filming and delivery of the storyline fails terribly. The director makes several attempts to instill an artistic quality to this film, although not all are successful and most are overused. Sunny Leone is certainly a bright spot in this film. Her natural beauty and sexual performances certainly are among the few highlights for me.

Gia is another example of a movie that had a reasonably good premise but failed to deliver. The scenes were repetitive and boring and the acting was memorable for all the wrong reasons. We won't be watching this one again.