The Girl next door

Stacy Baker is the housewife from the American south who went into the porn business where she became famous as Stacy Valentine. We follow her during two years as a rising porn star.Is there any point in showing yet another blond bimbo with pouting plastic lips, silicon tits big as water melons and a brain big as a pea? Does anybody care about a horny bimbo who never says no? Christina Fugate's gripping documentary shows us the humanity behind porn star Stacy Valentine's shallow facade. When the film was shown at Slamdance the tickets sold out in six minutes (a record) and after pressure from the audience an extra screening was added. Stacy Baker grew up in Oklahoma, married and became a housewife. Her husband wanted her to pose for nude pictures in a men's magazine but when she did, he only became pissed off. She left him, went to California, stripped in front of a film camera and did what she did best- had sex. We follow her first two years as a porn actress, in ups and downs, in private and at work, in happiness and nervousness on sets and at award ceremonies, through the lack of confidence at therapy sessions, touching conversations with her adoptive mother and brutally humiliating pictures from fat-suction and lip-enhancements. Stacy's natural openness arouses strong emotions and her relationship with her boyfriend Julian, a porn star himself, is particularly moving. The relationship is put under big stress and the frictions emphasise the difficulties in being two persons in one -the career-driven porn star and the lovesick private person. ''If I'm horny, I go to work. If I need affection, I have my cat,'' Stacy says with a wry smile and an unconvincing voice.