Popular porn is a funny thing: it takes one of our most basic urges, sex, and puts so many ribbons and bows on it that we hardly recognize our pleasurable pastime. In many ways, All About Anna is a dramatic and important departure from this trend. The film, made by women, is billed as a porn for women and couples and focuses more on the way sex is a meaningful part of one's life and less on genitalia divorced from their owner by a way-too-close camera angle. It tells the story of a girl named Anna who has been hurt by men and decides to avoid future hurt by having sex with no-strings-attached strangers. Predictably, the man who hurt her reappears and throws her life back into an emotional rollercoaster which she rides, in addition to various sexual partners, throughout the film.

And, indeed, All About Anna|All About Anna shows sex which is healthy and realistic in a number of refreshing ways. Safe sex is not only practiced, but shown, an element which made my heart swell with joy. Not only was the sex safe, but Anna made more realistic noises during sex than those portrayed in most mainstream porn. Unlike mainstream porn stars who seem to last forever and never come, Anna's first partner, Frank, actually came in a reasonable amount of time and was shown pulling the used condom off (again, safely!). Anna and her partners seemed to enjoy themselves in these sex scenes at climax moments rather than the previous trend in porn to show women who are screaming in ecstasy from the moment the man walks in the door.

Unfortunately, though this film is important as a new style of porn (or new style of mainstream movie, depending on your perspective), it fell flat in many ways. The dialogue was unconvincing and the voice-overs were painfully clichéd. The plot was predictable and had been done more convincingly in other mainstream films.

More importantly, however, I realized after watching this film that it was a little too realistic for my taste. Two of the scenes involved her having sex with a man for all of three minutes each time with absolutely no foreplay. Did she have a good time? Maybe. But, personally, sex for me is about more than three minutes of penetration. I don't think I'm alone in enjoying the intimacy that comes with some sex and would have loved to see more extended sex scenes in which that was portrayed. As it was, I had to wait until the second half of the film for that intimacy, which I found in both the sex scene between Anna and a female friend and in the final sex scene between Anna and her long lost love. Both were fantastic, which was nice given the dearth of hot, intimate but erotic all female porn especially.

All About Anna is divided into four chapters, of which each has at least one explicit sex scene. In chapter one, Anna has the two quick, foreplay-less penetrative sexual experiences that I mention earlier in the review with two separate men. In chapter two, Anna's female roommate is pictured having sex with a male partner, though the sex is more goofy and fun than erotic—certainly a legitimate kind of sex to portray. I also appreciated that this scene featured foreplay. Also in chapter two, Anna is pictured masturbating to a very erotic memory of her ex boyfriend. In chapter three, after Anna has moved to Paris for a job, Johann, her ex-lover is also pictured fantasizing as he masturbates in the shower. His later seduction at the hands of Anna's former roommate is convincingly uncomfortable and his surprise early ejaculation is certainly familiar to anyone who has sex with males. A hot scene between Anna and a girl in Paris is also in this scene. In chapter four, there's a finale scene between Anna and Johann as they rekindle their long lost love and live happily (and hotly) ever after.

All About Anna is more of a film of possibilities than anything else. It shows us what mainstream film could be if it were more open to explicit sex but it doesn't really pass for a good mainstream film due to poor plot and weak character development. In addition, rather than being the kind of porn that you could sit back and get off during every scene, it's more of a tour of types of sex with some great sex mixed in with some silly sex mixed in with some unexciting sex. Definitely worth watching at least once, but should be approached with different expectations than one brings to other porns.