Bonnie Sherr Klein’s Not a Love Story by Rebecca Sullivan (review)

In her introduction to Bonnie Sherr Klein's "Not a Love Story," Rebecca Sullivan reminisces that "when [she] first saw Not a Love Story, in 1992, [she] hated almost everything about it" (6). Despite this admission, Sullivan reconsiders her initial dislike of the film, and advocates a second look, contending that Klein's film, which attempts to offer a feminist perspective on pornography and sex work, and which many critics pan for being glaringly anti-porn, actually resists a one-sided perspective. Rather than position the film in the context of the Porn Wars, within which it has been predominately situated, Sullivan suggests that it should be read outside the pro- or anti-porn binary. While Sullivan acknowledges the film's tendency toward moralizing, and the problems with its often-redemptive spirit, she argues that Not a Love Story "gives such voice to [sex workers] that it overwhelms our own desire to reduce the arguments contained therein to a simple case of pro-versus anti-pornography" (8). Sullivan boldly situates Not a Love Story at the centre of the Porn Wars and the Canadian Sex Crisis of the 1980s and 1990s, before attempting to extricate it from that centre to provide, if not an acquittal from the original accusations of the film's shortcomings, at least a plausible defense.

Released in Canada in 1981, Klein's film was made for the now-defunct Studio D, the National Film Board's Women's Unit, and features Klein and activist, performance artist, and stripper, Lindalee Tracey, as well as several sex workers, and some anti-porn feminist activists. It journeys with Klein and Tracey through seamy sex clubs and porn shoots in Montreal, New York, and San Francisco, and is regarded as the "first Canadian film to explore pornography's role in society from a feminist perspective" (i).

After providing a brief history of the film's historical context, and an overview of the criticisms that were aimed at it, Sullivan interviews the surviving filmmakers and familiarizes herself with numerous interviews with Tracey, who died in 2006. These interviews are critical to her examination of the film as a major catalyst for discussion of sex work and pornography in Canada, and they work to support her central claim that the film complicates the pro-versus anti-pornography binary by provocatively probing issues of social inequality and the role of feminist agency within Canadian sex work.

The book's first chapter discusses Klein's association with the National Film Board, and also provides a brief biography of Klein, outlining her use of film as social critique and feminist voice. While brief, this chapter provides an informative window on Klein's relationship with Studio D, and the social climate of the National Film Board in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Sullivan presents Klein's motivations for navigating the worlds of feminism and pornography, and rather than critique these motivations, she lets Klein's experiences with the NFB and her assertion that "film is a medium of questions" (22) speak for themselves.

Sullivan delves into the making of Not a Love Story in her second chapter including several reminiscences of the crew's thought process during filming before moving into a discussion of Tracey's attachment to the project and her ensuing relationship with Klein. In doing so, Sullivan examines Tracey's part in the filmmaking, her motivations, and her role as a bridge between Klein and the sex workers. Sullivan also details Klein's movement away from a perspective in which she celebrates sexual expression while criticizing pornography toward exposing what she saw as the unknown seamy side of the porn industry. Sullivan contextualizes Klein's actions within the anti-pornography movement at the time and criticizes her for having more concern for the viewer than for the on-screen worker. Sullivan's criticisms do not specifically blame Klein for her position, but rather she includes her in what she describes as the wilfully uninformed, but...