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Blur
Rating: 2 Stars
Directed by Chi Chi LaRue. Videography by Max Phillips. Edited by Delta Productions. Music by Sound Designs. Starring Colby Taylor, Jeremy Tucker, Jason Law, Michel Mattel, Kyle Becker, Shane Rockford, and Jon Marino.
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There's no reason why gay racism can't be addressed in gay adult video. But Blur regards the issue with an astigmatic eye. The earnest, uncredited soap-operatic scenario reunites three erstwhile high school chums. "It sims so weird dat we are all gradu-ay-ting from collitch," says Québecois Michel Mattel, picking his way through more English dialogue than he can handle. Mattel and cohort Kyle Becker, who later behave as if they were raised in a Klan Klavern, await the unveiling of a new boyfriend imported from Harvard by the third member of the triumvirate, sensitive blind boy Colby Taylor.

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The boyfriend, of course, is black. Taylor, who can't see the color of his lover's skin, has no notion of race. (This plot was trite when Elizabeth Hartman and Sidney Poitier emoted their way through a variant of it in A Patch of Blue 35 years ago.) Mattel and Becker are scandalized. Rejected by Taylor's friends, the boyfriend flees back East. His retreat could have sanely resulted from a rude awakening to Taylor's affinity for racist assholes, but this young black man departs for improbably noble and self-sacrificing reasons. Since the character is embodied by gorgeous, toffee-skinned Jeremy Tucker, whose most obvious asset is his appearance, and whose warm, understated, sensuous performance outclasses every other element of this production, the bigotry he encounters seems especially crude.

Director Chi Chi LaRue doesn't tap into the erotic potential of Taylor's need to "see" through his fingertips, but if LaRue's gift for sex weren't otherwise in evidence, Blur would be unwatchable. When Mattel writhes with pleasure as Jon Marino's fingers probe his anus, he's infectiously turned on. (This happens before we find out that his character is a jerk.) In his encounter with Taylor, Jason Law shows star potential and a knack for rimming, though the scene's erotic punch is weakened by its setup: Law, a white hustler, has been hired by Becker and Mattel to help Taylor overcome "this sick obsession" with black guys. In this story-driven vehicle, the story blurs the sex.