The Submission of Emma Marx (2013 Video) User Reviews

Loved it!

[lferrigon-1 · 10/10 · 4 June 2013]

I enjoyed this move starring Penny Pax as Emma Marx who finds herself seduced into a world of BDSM. I have seen many movies (on Cinnemax) like this but the man ruins it by introducing a new person into their secret love affair. Here he does not do that which I am glad about. He cares that she is loving this as much as he unlike the Cinnemax movies He makes it clear that she can leave at any time. Her feelings of importance to him.

Also, unlike in other such movies, there is mutual respect on both sides.

I liked how Emma lay ed out the ground rules at the beginning as to what she will not accept such as choking, knife play etc. He gives her a safe word for her to say if she wishes to stop.

She lives with her parents and older sister Nadia who is engaged. Emma likes this secret life but has doubts when Nadia's fiancée Ray, notices rope marks on her arms and her sister mentions red bruises on her rear end. Emma overhears them judging her lifestyle which makes Emma upset and when she speaks of this to Mr. Fredrick, he is quite upset and lets her know this.She informs him that she loves him but is not sure about this after hearing the opinions of her sister and her sister's fiancée. He is angry that she has allowed the opinion of others control her feelings.

She quits being his slave and helps Nadia plan her wedding. Emma apologizes to her sister for not be more supportive earlier but Nadia accepts it and says that she is happy and that is all that matters and no one can dictate what is right for anyone else.

Emma then goes back to Mr. Fredricks and they resume their master/slave relationship.

I enjoyed this movie so much I purchased it.

BDSM lite, for the uninitiated

[lor_ · 8 July 2015]

Pornographer Jacky St. James is a successful popularizer: after cranking out literally dozens of video features taking incest to a "safe" (stepsister, step-dad) level, she has fallen under the influence of the novel "50 Shades of Grey" and embarked on a series of tame, oh so tame BDSM features, of which EMMA MARX is the first hit. I enjoyed it for what it is, the drawback being all those punches pulled.

Penny Pax is good casting in the title role, though hardly ideal for reasons that become apparent later in the saga (and more-so in its sequel BOUNDARIES). Film got off to a rocky start which may or may not have gone over the heads of loyal viewers: Jacky herself (distinctive voice) handles the first-person narration as Emma recalling events, and there's lots of that narration relied upon. This clashes not only with Penny's live-action voice in the role, but later on when Penny voices-over an endless letter's contents with her own voice.

At any rate, the narrative is postponed at the outset for 18 minutes as we watch an extraneous (but quality) sex scene of Penny's "normal" sister Riley Reid humping Riley's fiancé Van Wylde on a bed covering her with rose petals, like Mena Survari in American BEAUTY (intentional I would assume). My first reaction was Thank God that smarmy Kevin Spacey doesn't do porn.

After this short subject appended to the movie concludes, film proper begins with college student Penny interviewing eccentric businessman (think an even creepier version of Mark Cuban) Richie Calhoun about his success and weird sexism -he hires almost 100% women as employees because he finds them malleable and easy to dominate.

Penny confronts him on this subject, but it becomes crystal clear that she's about to become #1 sub to his dom. She follows up by signing a non-disclosure agreement with Richie and has mild S&M oriented sex with him, getting a cushy job with his company upon graduation.

Deal is that he has virtually unlimited control over Marx including sex in the office with her whenever he feels like it. Director Jacky shows up in a cameo role as the office manager, and there's plenty of sex for Penny at Calhoun's mansion. Jacky's #1 gimmick here is that 90% of the sex content in her BDSM movies like this one is identical to the sex in a mainstream porn video -the outré S&M and bondage stuff is mainly alluded to verbally or shown only briefly. From a commercial standpoint, this is a savvy decision, because the content of actual bondage, fetish and sadism videos is generally unwatchable by porn fans, myself included, and is not really sex (but violence instead) in a definitional sense, except to the inner circle.

EMMA MARX has a very unusual and to my mind deficient structure among modern porn films in that once the reliable Riley humping is completed the rest of the film is entirely devoted to sex and some light mayhem between Pax and Calhoun. Where's the variety? A cast of four in a porn film may be economical but it flies in the face of what an audience really wants, especially since we don't get any (expected) switcheroo combos, such as Riley cheating with Calhoun or sis Pax testing the bed skills of future brother-in-law Wylde.

So once she has signed on the dotted line, and Richie trains her to be a good little sub, the story's initial tension and suspense dissipates, and is even less present in the sequel. With extreme implements and acts ruled out at the outset by mutual consent (no knives, no speculum or other gynecological instruments, no permanent body marking or mutilation, etc.), Jacky's script emphasizes Penny's aversion to anal sex, which of course her character Emma reluctantly agrees to later under Richie's all-powerful influence. That's a stupid in-joke that's not very in: any contemporary porn fan knows that actress Pax is among the most proficient anal sex specialists in the business, almost to the level of the last decade's superstar Katja Kassin, who would complain about having to do vaginal sex scenes instead.

Thematically, Jacky scores some points in comparing the two sisters -normal (read: cornball) Riley vs. adventurous (though shy) Penny. Throwing in cornball hubby (yes, they do get married) Wylde, the auteur carefully satirizes the square world vs. the allure of the hip BDSM world represented by Calhoun. That's the obvious appeal (forbidden fruit) of the "Shades" novels and what makes EMMA MARX work.

However, the philosophizing and proselytizing regarding the whole basis for domination/submission is quite unconvincing here -likely because (I contend) there are key contradictions built into this expanding cult's by-laws. Jacky's scripts are filled with pithy (and unchallenged) statements like: "the freedom of surrender" or giving oneself up to domination by another in order to be truly free. These contradictions merely remind me of Scientology and other ultra-irrational cults meant to seduce not the feeble-minded but rather folks who are open to suggestion. Unlike the characters depicted here (or their real-life BDSM loving counterparts) I need rational convincing, and so when Wylde quips to Riley regarding her sister "You can't reason with freaks" I didn't think he was being a straw man figure of fun - I agreed with his assessment.