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Rick Solomon's new film, Paris Hilton Sex Tape, opens awash in a gloomy green. We are in a Paris hotel room, though the film's first images--shot, as they are, with night-vision equipment and little more than tight close-ups--offer us very little to confirm this; Solomon, directing his first film (to find a release, at least), has chosen to begin his opus with nary a setup, choosing instead to toss the audience directly into action without pausing for scenery. It is a bold move, to be sure, but it is also a brilliant one; shedding the standard cinematic shackles, Solomon immediately announces Paris Hilton Sex Tape as an exercise in artistic embellishment, refusing to be bothered with such normally necessary structures as setting and, as we come to find out, story arc. Why has he chosen to do this? Theories will surely abound, though my guess is that, for the particular tale Solomon has set out to tell, setting and story structure are entirely unnecessary. Paris Hilton Sex Tape is a tale of romance, after all, and what is more universal, more boundless and expressing, than romance?
The star of the picture is not, surprisingly, the City of Lights; the film may be set in Paris, but Paris is not the Paris of the title. No, that Paris is Paris Hilton--not Paris Hilton as in the hotel that houses the room in Paris where the film is set, but rather, Paris Hilton as in the beautiful heiress to the Hilton hotel fortune. And as we meet the young Paris Hilton (age 19, reportedly, at the time of filming), she is in the throes of passion. Or, if not passion, then a raging indifference to being porked; her face vacant, her eyes glowing eerily due to the night- vision equipment, Paris has an unattached, almost ghostly presence that is only enhanced by her apparent lack of pubic hair. "Who is this shaved vixen?" I found myself asking as I watched her being jostled about--an absurd question, to be sure, especially given my penchant for watching Celebrities Uncensored on E!, but a question I asked nonetheless, for the first moments of Paris Hilton Sex Tape are mysterious and otherworldly, almost disturbing. Dropped, as we are, immediately into the act of coitus by Solomon, our bearings are quickly thrown, and as we hurry to catch up, our senses are assaulted by the green, grainy images before our eyes, and the deep, throaty "Ooooh"s and "Aaaaaah"s that fill our ears.
It is through these "Ooooh"s and "Aaaaaah"s that we meet Paris' co-star in the film who is, shockingly, Rick Solomon himself. Need it be pointed out how decidedly brave such a maneuver is for a director? One would be hard-pressed to picture a Spielberg or a Soderbergh featuring himself, let alone his penis--let alone his penis thrusting in and out of a 19-year-old hotel heiress--in one of his own films, but that is precisely what Solomon has done. And not only has he cast himself, but he is playing himself, infusing Paris Hilton Sex Tape with the sort of personal exploration so woefully missing from American cinema these days; turning a critical lens on himself, Solomon thoroughly exposes himself but refuses to coat his persona in polish, showing himself as is, without any puffery. When, in a startling moment, Paris' cell phone rings just as Solomon is about to remount her, Solomon offers only a "Fuck your phone" in response to her reaching for it, and his delivery of the line--gruff, certainly, but also tinged with a sad wash of desperation and an echo of pleading--cuts deep with its honesty, exposing Solomon as a considerable talent not just behind the lens, but in front of it as well.
In any romance, a leading man is only as good as his female counterpart, however, and with Paris Hilton we are blessed with a natural, heart-fluttering personality; from the delivery of her first line--a cheery "Hi!"--given directly to the camera (for the fourth wall is yet another one of film's boundaries to be shattered by Solomon), her performance transcends that which we have come to expect from our leading ladies. Naked and cavorting on a bed, and quite often distracted as she does so, she is a sight to behold onscreen, engaging you with both her casualness and her beauty; her tanned skin turned a glowing gray by Solomon's choice of night-vision footage, she is much like a blazing, tumbling asteroid cutting her way across the screen. Paris, as portrayed by herself, is a smart, yet bored, young woman, and during the scenes of disjointed, clumsy coitus--which are pretty much every scene--she appears to be both there and not there, revealing the shocking true message of Solomon's Paris Hilton Sex Tape: that the rich and vapid occasionally have empty, awkward, and ultimately fairly unenjoyable sex. It is a message only amplified by the film's conclusion, for not only is there no climax, but there are no climaxes; ending his film in the midst, rather than at the conclusion, of oral sex, Solomon has given Paris Hilton Sex Tape a heart-wrenching and frustrating finale. It is an ending that perfectly echoes the postmodern dilemma posed by the film entire: There is no happy ending even for characters on videotape, only the existential dilemma of the ongoing search for pleasure. Because of this, Paris Hilton Sex Tape can be summed up in a single word: tragedy.
