Swedish director John Millerman’s first feature Amanda’s Diary – Chapter 1 (Private, 1998) is a stylish and simple story about the coming of age of a young and not-so-innocent girl, Amanda, celebrating her 18th birthday. Throughout five uninhibited scenes Amanda discovers her sexuality in the company of her best friend naughty Nicol and other close acquaintances. Dutch actress Kate More’s curves are as appealing as the quality of the photography, and she seems to have the best time of her life with the all Hungarian cast.

 

The story is nothing to write home about. Amanda gets a camcorder and a dildo for her 18th birthday and undertakes to play a little with her new toys. Unfortunately, we don’t really get a chance to see through the lens of the camcorder. Millerman didn’t apparently think useful to experiment with the many possibilities of a dialogic diegesis. Indeed, it would have been quite interesting to insert a POV framework and create multiple levels of identification to the characters as in, for instance, Katherine Bigelow’s sci-fi apocalyptic psycho-thriller Strange Days (1995). Despite being a bit conservative, the editing has good timing and takes full advantage of multiple close-ups and juxtaposed action scenes.

 

As I was looking for some background information on the film, I saw that imdb.com had an entry on it. According to them, it belongs to the romance genre…hmmm…I don’t know about that…yeah, maybe.. To a certain extent, I agree that Amanda’s Diary has a romantic quality about it. By the beginning of the film, Millerman sets the tone as the opening credits show Amanda / Kate slightly dancing in slow motion. She’s just draped in a light and see-through fabric. I thought for a couple seconds that I was about to watch a softcore movie.

 

It takes a while for Amanda to get down to business. In other words, think of Amanda as a very cerebral porn heroine. She’s a feeler and what gets her wet are her fantasies only. The scene starts with her talking on the phone with her perverted friend, Nicol. Nicol’s been around and she didn’t give Amanda a dildo to use it as a bedroom ornament. Both girls are soon having phone sex and the psyche of the two girls is clearly different. Nicol thinks of a dildo as an instrument of pleasure whereas Amanda thinks it is just a prop in the fantasy land she lives in. While Nicol is riding her humongous and blue and transparent toy penis, Amanda is picturing herself sucking the thick rod of a handsome blond hunk she hit on at the party.  Soon, the stud’s girlfriend comes joining them and they end up having a lascivious threesome with some fake and cheesy Carlos Santana guitar solo playing in the background. I really liked the way Millerman juxtaposes the dildo and the penis so as to create a quasi-fantasmatic crescendo leading up to a thick and foamy ejaculation of the…dildo? …uh…penis?…I don’t know! I’m lost!

 

I am obviously skipping some details on this opening scene. The truth is that Millerman’s intimist style and use of a sometimes atmospheric score renders very intimate and beautiful love scenes where actors seem to be given free reign to their fantasies. It’s surprisingly very tender and not raunchy at all. Don’t expect wild monkey sex but some edulcorated sex romp where actors and actresses keep fucking with style and abandon. I guess that’s what the pros do, they fuck with style.

 

The bedroom scene takes up a big part of the movie and is, by far, the best one if you compare it to the subsequent scenes. It’s daylight, it takes place in a bedroom and in a park with a a pretty unoriginal pastoral fivesome. It’s all good but so different from the first half. Still, you get to like the characters immediately despite their poorly dubbed voices. They are young, beautiful and relaxed. The DVD actually comes with a “report” / documentary where you get to see a couple interviews of the actors. It’s all fun and issue-free. It’s really hard not to stop watching this film. Hmmm…now that I’m thinking about it, I’d like to see more films with Hungarian casts. Any suggestions for future reviews?

 

 

 

 


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