Queen of Manhattan, A movie review
Vanessa del Rio's lustful life is bigger than director Mignone's down and dirty tale.
New York’s AMC Empire 25 on 42nd street seemed the most appropriate venue to view Thomas Mignone’s Queen of Manhattan, a film that highlights the career of porn super star Vanessa Del Rio, nee Ana Maria Sanchez. The multiplex was next to the former site of the Avon 7, a notorious S&M theater where Bizarre Styles and some kinkier titles from Vanessa’s substantial oeuvre had helped fill the coffers through the 70s and into the 80s. Seated in my plush recliner, I was impressed with the half hour of trailers that previewed The Queen. Each featured powerful female lead characters and big names: Jennifer Lawrence, Julia Roberts, Emma Thompson and Jennifer Lopez, another “Latin from Manhattan”…I was glad to see my good friend Vanessa sharing the screen with other major stars playing in LaserVison in a triumphant return to the ole Deuce. You may go to Thomas Mignone’s Queen of Manhattan expecting to learn how Vanessa del Rio earned respect and royal status in a business run by and for men. But this is no biopic. What you will see is a movie that’s more about the sleazy, misogynist, greedy, blood-thirsty New York world of fuck films. Other shows have explored the same territory with the same take. The Deuce ( with which Mignone had some involvement and for which I was a paid consultant with a cameo) had a more balanced look at the industry during the time because they spent three seasons moving us through the eras. Mignone zigzags back and forth through the timeline with little regard for accuracy, hurrying to get to the AIDS plague for optimum shock value
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Actress Vivian Lamoli who plays Vanessa is head- to- toe brown and beautiful, resembling VdR’s full lush lips, firm round thighs, rich dark mane -and she’s very believable as a potential sexpot. Ms. Lamoli is an accomplished actress with plenty of great credits under her garter belt. She’s a pleasure to see and she does a good job with what she’s given to do. The problem is, she isn’t given enough to do, or nothing very exciting. To move the plot along, Mignone has her pop out center screen in great costumes - glitzy stripper, domme, Latin dancer… and talk to the audience about which other character is gonna get whacked or how much she loves sex. But it’s too much tell and no show. This is a movie about a woman with a well-earned reputation as a wild, enthusiastic sex goddess with, alas, no exciting sex scene.
An early scene between Vanessa and Carley (Jesse Metcalfe) is powerful and could be complex, but it’s not further explored and they don’t meet up again. I wonder if some of Vanessa’s interactions with Carly or other male characters wound up on the cutting room floor to make room for the gore. Ms. Lamoli’s name is relegated to the bottom of the credits. The director wants us to get off more on scenes of violence than pleasure. (I instinctively covered my eyes a few times). Here’s where Mignone gets to use not only misogyny but homophobia as literal battering rams. The film begins in 1981 by which time Vanessa had actually starred in over fifty films, and won or been nominated for nearly a dozen awards, but we’ll never see that. It quickly hustles us back to the 70’s. I was never quite sure which decade we were in.
My date for the screening was my long time friend writer Viv Forlander who is Vanessa’s BFF. At the conclusion of the movie, we sat speechless as the credits rolled. Viv’s first comment was “I wish Vanessa had played Vanessa.” I stuck up for Ms. Lamoli. The problem: nobody was playing Vanessa. It just wasn’t in the script. “
“She actually planned how to be a sex goddess by studying her idol Isabel Sarli,” said Viv.
(A large poster of Argentine actress Isabel Sarli “the Glamour Queen” holds a place of honor in Vanessa’s home, today).
Isabel Sarli is mentioned by first name only and there may be a clip of her but all we get is cute little 8 year old Ana announcing gleefully “I wanna be a slut!” We don’t get any of the steps she took to achieve her ambition. Vanessa became an actual amazon when a romance brought her into the world of body building and she became marvelously pumped. The muscle was hinted at in a scene when VdR enters in a total white skintight pants outfit and Dominique (Drea DeMatteo) squeezes her arm clearly impressed. Would you have preferred to see Vanessa pumping iron with boyfriend muscleman Mike, the two of them hot and sweaty? I would. The scene of Vdr and her doomed friend Sandy so well played by Taryn Manning did not adequately spotlight Vanessa. In the scene, Vanessa and Sandy are sitting on a park bench with Vanessa giving Sandy one of her usual pep talks. They are interrupted by a fan who‘s hoping for a photo. He’s a tall, long haired white guy, kind of hippie looking. Since, as the movie tells us, VdR was originally promoted as a Latin bombshell to appeal to the brown and black communities, it would have been more illuminating to see three or four young Puerto Ricans clamor for her attention, bowing and dropping to the grass awe-struck before her, a harbinger of the legions of fans she has amassed. A mention of those early awards and nominations would have shown an evolution in the porn business and that was not the director’s vision. At the conclusion, we learn that Vanessa has come up in the world because instead of the trademark leopard jacket she’s worn throughout, she’s wearing white mink. Her amazing rise is cued as a fashion statement. Vanessa really was a queen (and still is) but we see that only in the movie’s title not the film’s execution.
The theater wasn’t crowded, just a handful of people (no pun intended) but these days folks stay away when they know certain shows stream quickly. As we turned to leave I noticed a well-dressed middle-aged black woman headed to the exit. Her name was Tamona and we chatted her up. Her comment: “Vanessa was EXTRAORDINARY; why did they make her just ordinary?”
Viv agreed. Yes, Tamona had nailed it. She told us that as a teen she used to sneak in to see Vanessa’s movies. Tamona told us she’s an educator who had previously written some off-Broadway plays. The movie was inspiring her to get back to writing plays. That’s the thing, a movie, doesn’t have to be great to inspire discussion, particularly when the movie has a strong sexual hook.
Tamona thought the director must have known the real Mickey character - played by veteran actor David Provall - or been fascinated by him. “The movie is really about him.’ she said, meaning the movie maker as well as that character. Mickey’s part of the story is a treasure trove of violence. Provall has aged and he looks even more scary. As for villains, I think he out-skeeves Richie Aprile, his memorable character on the Sopranos.
Another Soprano’s alumna Drea DeMatteo co-stars as Dominique, Vanessa’s supervisor and sometime confidante. Their scenes together are real and well-done but Dominique hints at a back story that would have been interesting to see.
Viv was worried about what to say to her Bestie as a review. Vanessa had asked us to tell her the truth. As it turns out, Vanessa was not surprised.It was exactly what she expected. She had not seen the completed film. She knew Mignone wanted to use her name as a way into the story he wanted to tell and to get other stars on board and raise more capital. She agreed to let him run with it. Esai Morales and other actors from hit tv shows signed on. Queen of Manhattan was completed in 2022. It premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. Mignone made good on that run. Vanessa knew that her name would draw an audience and even if the movie wasn’t great her fans would want to see it and people would talk about it. All along she had told us that the movie really wasn’t about her. I guess we just didn’t want to hear her, we wanted to think otherwise because a well-crafted dramatization of the life and career of Vanessa Del Rio a true pleasure activist would be phenomenal.
Hope for the future
There are other films about women in pornography and they are initiated by women: a documentary about Robin Byrd with female producers is due from HBO. Gloria Leonard’s daughter Robin Leonardi has set up a Gloria biopic with a great production company and a Hollywood star. Artist photographer Barbara Nitke has written a feature which she hopes to shoot in 2026. A documentary about Club 90 the forty year friendship and porn star support group that includes Annie Sprinkle, Jane Hamilton (Veronica Hart), Candida Royalle, Gloria Leonard and me has a female writer and an academy award winning female director on board. The male take on the porn world is burdened too often with guilt and misogyny-filled cautionary tales. Women’s sexuality can be intimidating. I look forward to seeing more and more of the female gaze.
Anyone who would like to get deep inside Vanessa Del Rio can check out the book Fifty Years of Slightly Slutty Behavior the massive, fully illustrated, autobiography of VdR, edited by Dian Hanson, published by Taschen, in 2010. Her audiences can reach her via social media sites at Facebook and Instagram where she still charms the pants off tens of thousands of adoring fans. For a piece of Vanessa, visit http://stores.ebay.com/Vanessa-del-Rio-Memorabilia.
She personally signs each and every picture and on occasion will send a live kiss on a personalized thank you note. The movie Queen of Manhattan will begin streaming on October 14. I’d love to hear what you think..
Well, dammit, I am pissed these folks didn’t create the biography Vanessa deserves— it’s so much bigger and mindblowing than anything they came up with! I’m so sick of us getting this “idiot” treatment.
One thing I learned when I was covering new releases for Forum: “The Devil in Miss Jones 3&4” came out, and normally, these kind of sequels on a “big name” are duds.
But instead, it had the most incredibly choreographed and shot group-scene, with VdR in the center of it, that I’ve ever seen. Period.
I contacted the video’s named director, Tony Lovett, and he said, “Oh that wasn’t me. Vanessa told me to step aside, she had a vision and she directed the whole thing from casting to final.” It is a tour de force.
I just watched it on the streaming service Hoopla and what an odd duck of a movie it is. The lead actress is very good, even if she seems to be channeling Ariana DeBose more than Vanessa. The cast is also surprisingly good for what appears to be a very low budget movie. But I kind of knew we were in trouble early on with a projection/green screen shot that made it look like Gaiety Burlesk, Show World Center and Village Cigars were all in the same vicinity. The script does absolutely no one any favors as it tries to cover too many disparate elements without doing any of them very well.