YOU would expect the story of an Oklahoma housewife who became a porn star, to make a fascinating documentary, and despite inadequate editing and overreliance on bad background music, “The Girl Next Door” doesn’t disappoint.
It takes you on a seductive – if not very sexy – tour of the weird reality underlying the industry so amusingly fictionalized in “Boogie Nights,” and it partly answers one of the big questions avoided by that film: namely what kind of personal lives do porn stars have outside of work?
For two years, filmmaker Christine Fugate followed Stacy Valentine (the oddly conventional porno name adopted by Stacy Baker) -who escaped from a bad marriage and a dull life to become an adult-video star (after her bullying then-husband made her submit nude photographs to a skin mag).
To Fugate’s apparent surprise, Stacy turns out not to be a victim of childhood sexual abuse or junkie, but a sweet, rather ordinary woman who generally enjoys her work, but who suffers from loneliness and a surprisingly poor body-image. The ugliest, most disturbing scenes in the movie are her liposuction operations.
—-
THE GIRL NEXT DOOR 1/2
Running time: 85 minutes. Not rated. At the Screening Room, Canal and Varick streets.