Ricky: Diary of a Male Porn Star
Reel Affirmations 2003
Poco Piu Di Un Anno Fa
Rating: 
(3 out of 5)
Friday, 10/17/2003, 9:00 PM
Feature presentation, $9 at Lincoln Theatre
Italian with English subtitles
IT’S NOT EASY being a porn star.
Unless, of course, you’re a big-dicked Italian with a fabulous apartment in Rome, hip friends and a heart of gold. Or at least that’s the fantasy indulged in director Marco Filiberti’s Ricky: Diary of a Male Porn Star, a fantasy apparently so appealing to the director that he had to play the title role himself.
Diary charts a tumultuous year in Ricky’s life as a flashback from the year 2014 where a group of filmmakers are making a documentary about the famed porn star’s life. Ricky, estranged from his family, reconnects with his brother after a financial crisis threatens the family manor, and in the process comes to question the direction and purpose of his life. After watching single mother die in a horrible car accident, Ricky attempts to adopt the orphaned child, putting his career and life goals at cross purposes.
Weakest when delving into melodrama, Diary shines brightest when going for laughs, such as the day Ricky brings his brother along on a porn shoot, or when his harpy sister-in-law makes a surprising discovery in his apartment.
The key problem is Filiberti himself as Ricky, a supposedly famous porn star whose eyeliner enhanced come-hither looks and blow dried blond hair may have passed as a porn top in 1983, but in 1999 comes across as more Frankenfurter than Stryker.
If you can suspend your disbelief on that one topic, you’ll find yourself left with an entertaining, amusing, but not very filling, Italian porn confection.
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