Tatiana 1: Private Gold 26

Private/Fraserside Holdings, Ltd/Milcap Media

Genre: Feature, Costume Drama

Director/Writer: Pierre Woodman

Cast: Tania Russof, Andrew Youngman, Rita, David Perry, Vanda, Jean
Yves LeCastel, Leslie Taylor, Caroline, Sarah, Myrka, Bettina, Keri, Alan
Deloin, Eva, Jennifer Red, Atilla, Bruno Assix, Frank Gun, Frankie Versace,
Mephisto, Yves Baillat, Zoltan

Length: 120 minutes

Date of Production: 11/97 (credits), 1/31/98(box)

Extra's: 4 trailers, Tatiana's Report, a few biographies, Production
Notes, widescreen, various languages and subtitles, credits in French
(thanks a lot assholes!)

Audio/Video Quality: The picture didn't look as bad as a movie made
by Extreme Associates but it was still fairly bad much of the time. After
reading all the glowing reviews this one got, I was surprised to see just
how forgiving most people are to blurred camera shots, digital artifacts,
lighting problems and a host of other technical faults. The audio was mostly
in French with an occasional narrative to give the viewer a general idea of
what's going on. The sex sounds are dubbed too so any enjoyment I might have
derived from real moans and groans was lost.

Review: Tatiana 1 is one of the most reviewed dvds I've ever seen
online and the general consensus had been that it was a great movie with hot
women who had great sex. When I saw a great sale of Private titles, I picked
up the entire trilogy, along with dozens of other Private movies, and nearly
hurt my arm patting myself on the back. Needless to say, I found out the
hard way that reviews, especially on porn movies, are very subjective.

To sum up the modest story of the movie: Tatiana is a farm girl who's dad is
in debt to a rich and powerful jerk. The family is going to lose everything
if she doesn't figure out a way to pay the guy back. This being a porno, guess what she decides to work out. The first volume merely
establishes the characters (I'm assuming here since my French is about as
good as my Russian language skills).

I researched the cast and found that no one agreed on who everyone in the
sex scenes was. Many of the performers were new at the time so I can barely
expect Private to know who they were (this is called sarcasm for those of
you who can't tell) and my long diminished ability to speak and read French
was just enough to figure out that no one had all of the performers
right-based on the French credits. No matter, names are not important in a
porn movie, only how hot the sex scenes are, right? Well, the problem here
is that only two scenes were worth watching more than once. I bought the dvd
because I wanted to see Tania but her sole scene (what a frickin' gyp) was,
to be excessively generous, poor. I've seen more heat on an Ed Powers
dvd.

The acting may have been great in whatever language it was filmed in but
even the dubbed French audio track was not in synch so I'll never know if
the cast missed their chance to play in a Shakespearean play. Given that a
feature movie with poor acting and/or communication problems is going to
have to rely solely on great sex to pull it through, this one fell flat on
it's face. I'd tell you more but I'm still depressed at blowing so much
money for such a POS (ie: the entire trilogy is not great-read my upcoming
reviews) and there was so little to recommend that I warn you to stay far
away from it unless you are a huge fan of several of the performers.

Summary: Bad acting, lame audio track, lousy sex performances and
only a handful of admittedly attractive women made this one a pain to watch.
I've seen worse from Private but not by much. I think Tania has a pair of
beautiful eyes and a body to match but she sure didn't seem to be having
much fun here. Maybe having her husband as the director contributed to this
problem, I can't say for sure.