TIFF 2019: THE LAST PORNO SHOW MAKES IT POINT

Nathaniel Chadwick and Victoria Dunsmore in The Last Porno Show

This article is co-presented by AGJR Enterprise Inc. specializing in Financial Services

The porn industry can be very compelling but ever since PT Anderson‘s Boogie Nights which was a classic interpretation of the industry in California in the 1970s, it is really difficult to top the film’s accolades.  Fast forward a couple of decades later, Canadian director Kire Paputts touches the industry differently with his film The Last Porno Show which made its debut at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival.  The film focuses on Wayne, who is played by Nathaniel Chadwick, who inherits a closed down porno theatre from his father Al, played by Christian Aldo, who has passed away.  Wayne is a struggling method actor with daddy issues and repressed memories of his father that weren’t so enjoyable but yet memorable and distinctive.  When a prospective film role lands in the lap of Wayne, he then has to perform intense sexual scenes opposite Ashley, who is played by Victoria Dunsmore.  The inheritance of this porno theatre could have not come at a better time for Wayne as he opens up the theatre again to ignite his performance in this upcoming role along with getting to know his father furthermore and why he was the way he was in his childhood.

First and foremost what we love about The Last Porno Show here on FERNTV is that from the moment it begins, it doesn’t look like its a Canadian film from its beginning chapters.  It has been forever where any film that comes from this side of the border, there is that stigma that is attached to it but this time around The Last Porno Show does not give it that presence.  The grain of the film is sleek, the sound is on point, the cuts are not too in your face and the actors are playing their role and not trying to make a false lasting impression.  The admiration for setting the stage of this film draws your attention because you start wandering down the line of when the hell is this film going to start being Canadian and then you wonder why at the end that it doesn’t become that.    Which is such a great moment to celebrate for a film like The Last Porno Show because it moves Canadian cinema towards a new direction that demands the attention of a global audience.

Sure, there are some awkward, uncomfortable and demented scenes in the film where Wayne starts to repress his memories of his father by maintaining the porno theatre and trying on method acting on for size (no pun intended).  These memories surface hard when he speaks to those who were close to Al such as his past beau Julia, played by Mickey Sin and his business partner Ralf, who is played by Scott Carleton.  The journey that Wayne goes on as well as the audience is one that consists of much nudity, masturbation, sex, mannequins and glory holes.  What the film does not steer away from is the eye on the prize to tell the story or character study of Wayne even with all these distracting nuances of the porn industry which become part of the equation.  That is where we give it to director Kire Paputts and all those who are involved with this film because it rises above all the shock value scenes that prove to be minor because, for everyone, it is not our first rodeo like that of Wayne.