Play Time 1994

Word of Warning: Adult content. Discretion advised.



Play Time (1994) was one of those distinctive erotic films when I was nineteen. Monique Parent. God, I have seen this woman get naked in front of a camera so many times, in so many movies. And that body at 49 would be the envy of many 20 year olds. In 2008 she did a sex scene with the delicious Charlie Laine in Fred Olen Ray's Bikini Royale as was nineteen years her senior. Didn't stop the scene from being quite alluring in that way seeing an older woman and younger woman engaging in lesbian lovemaking in that Fred Olen Ray simulated Cinemax style.

Play Time was such a tease for me back when I had sex on my mind all the time. The idea of having Monique and Jennifer Burton often masturbating, drawing in so close, boobs even touching, yet not quite ever really getting it on, I was like a horse led to the water and deprived of the drink. Oh, and that water looks so divine. My mouth was watering.

I guess certain erotic films like Play Time have a specific agenda: to tease. There are your garden variety man-babe sex scenes, but the one I cared about--the wives deciding to address the latent urge to fuck each other--never quite materializes. This is of the "while the hubbies are away, their ladies play" variety. There is a little bit of adultery, but by film's end the two couples are all in good spirits with each other, although the big event of the two ladies finally capitalizing on the desire that had been developing over the film's length is about to happen as the camera moves away from them, to the sky, and then the fade to black denies us what could have been the  coup de grâce but alas...

Monique Parent has been in a number of various roles in regards to females in erotica. She has been the doe-eyed dish who hasn't experimented much outside her marriage, like she is here. It is Burton (and she is a dandy) in this film that influences her to move away from the barriers of normalcy, and embrace a bit of dangerous naughtiness. Well, danger in that while the pool man is outside her and Burton play with each other in a room inside a room where he could intrude upon them accidentally at any time. Or in an office as the two strip from their professional suits and once again acknowledge the lust that just thrives inside them. 

Burton's purpose in the film is to drive Monique out of her protective shell and encourage her to obey the yearnings that want so badly to emerge. What results is plenty of the two of them getting in their birthday suits and enjoying the exhibitionism.

The guys tag along in the movie so we understand how fortunate they are to share a bed with these lusty ladies. They benefit from when they are all hot and bothered and seeking a warm body to rapture.

They are both affluent businessmen providing quite the life of luxury for their ladies. So the ladies chat, think, and covet pleasure. Naughty ladies these are. Monique has it in her. While Burton and her man are shagging, Parent is dwelling on it, touching her self "down there" while her hubby cluelessly dozes. His loss.

Oh, this is quite the hotbed of burning desires. Burton has sex on the mind the entire time we see her. She seduces Parent’s husband not long after an excursion in a Jacuzzi which had Burton, Burton’s husband, and Monique getting nice and cozy. There are some tensions rising as Burton and Parent’s husband find themselves enjoying sex with each other quite a bit as Parent and Burton’s husband anguish about what to do to repair what seem to be two marriages on the skids.

While I do think a lengthy payoff scene at the end (particularly since the director of this film had a grasp of how to lens and produce some steamy moments between couples, but keeping it all softcore and simulated; this is not a film that pushes the envelope close towards hardcore), there is a really passionate kiss shared between Jenny and Monique that I rate up there towards the top in softcore. It is well performed, and the two women sell their desire for each other quite effectively. 

I have found (and still do) Monique to be easy on the eyes and a fixture in my own sex fantasies for nineteen years now. Since my hormones were going wild (I’m almost 38 now) as a teenager, and I took to watching erotica as a means to satiate those urges, softcore was accessible and the idea of playful sexual activity appealed to me. But, as much as I love to see Monique (naked or involved in simulated coitus), this is Burton’s film. Jenny runs away with it. She is sensual, liberated without restricting herself to the guidelines of typical married sex, seductive in how she draws Monique into her world, and fetching (how could a guy or girl *not* succumb to her charms?) in how she ingratiates herself to the people she’s attracted to and wants to please. You are in Jenny’s world, and it can be quite a place to be.

The film is about steps towards what happens at the end. Experimentation had existed with Jenny and her hubby, and when Monique is drawn into her orbit, soon comes Monique’s husband. Eventually all four realize that this could be an ideal good time, without the need to fight over fussy details like adultery. Why not “swap” partners? Why don’t Jenny and Monique just listen to what is screaming out from within them in regards to fucking each other? It is what they truly want, but it just takes time to finally let go and grab the bull by the horns.