The sight
of an actress doing something bizarre isn't something you'd think would shock the American public anymore, but when it's Isabella Rossellini in a snail costume pooping wetly onto her own face before
making sadomasochistic love to a fellow gastropod, well, that's the sort of thing that makes a person stand up and take notice. This star turn - and seven others, including roles as a fly, bee and
praying mantis - comprise the short film series "Green Porno," commissioned by the Sundance Channel and available for viewing at sundancechannel.com/greenporno.
The Sundance Channel approached
Rossellini about the series, which was intended to provide PR for the company, explore moviemaking for smaller screens like computers, cell phones and other mobile devices, and include an
environmental bent - hence the series' title and its natural-world subject matter. It's described in a press release as "a comical, but insightful study of the curious ways certain creatures 'make
love.'" To be fair, a lot of what's in the films is funny. There's something absurdist and hilarious about watching an actress of Rossellini's caliber bemoaning, in her distinguished accent, her death
by penile exsanguination while dressed as a large bee. But the Sundance Channel tries to pass off as lighthearted material that is at times so darkly comic as to cross the line into disturbing.
