Supersex upset me worse than any other show…ever, really. I had a reaction to “Superpower,” the premiere of this loosely biographical series about Italian porn legend Rocco Siffredi, so intense, so severe, that it knocked me out for the rest of the day. There’s a chance this review runs late because of it and everything.
Good. Good! I’ll say it again: Good. Art should have that kind of power. Art should be able to change your entire day. That it changed my day for the worse is immaterial. Supersex moved me, and that’s what good television is supposed to do.
“Loosely inspired by the life of Rocco Siffredi” as the closing credits have it, but (according to Siffredi) equally informed by the life and experiences of writer-creator Francesca Manieri, Supersex stars Alessandro Borghi — so beautiful and memorable as the young gangster Aureliano in Suburra: Blood on Rome, one of the best shows Netflix has ever aired — and Marco Fiore as Rocco at different stages in his life.
In a framing sequence set in 2004, Rocco is the toast of the adult film industry and the star attraction at a massive porn expo in Paris, one that the promoter compares to the Venice Biennale. Porn is a big business as well as an art form, and Rocco sits at the apex of both pyramids. But it’s clear he’s a drained, haunted man — smiling for the flashing cameras, going through the motions of greeting fans, but mostly just being shuffled from place to place. (Kind of like Radiohead in the documentary Meeting People Is Easy.)
Then, to the shock of everyone, including his cousin-slash-manager Gabriele (Enrico Borello), he announces his retirement on stage. (Kind of like David Bowie in the documentary Ziggy Stardust: The Motion Picture.) He’s getting out of the sex business.
But he’s not getting out of sex itself. In an intensely erotic interlude, he’s approached by the hostess of the event, who tells him filming with him is the only reason she came to the show. He puts his fingers in her mouth, turns her around, and fucks her in full view of an appreciative audience through a window. “You’re just flesh,” he tells her as he fucks her. “Look at them: The barrier between your life and porn will be no greater than this.” These are not the words of a well man.
Via flashbacks narrated by present-day Rocco, we find out why. The absolutely adorable Marco Fiore does the kind of work that eventually made stars out of Kiernan Shipka on Mad Men and the Game of Thrones kids as young Rocco is runs a gauntlet of intense formative sexual experiences. His situation is a recipe for a life centered, sometimes healthily and sometimes not, around sex.
Young Rocco’s idol is Tommaso (Francesco Pellegrini), his much older half-brother, rumored to be a literal son of a whore. Handsome, stylish, and cool, he’s the envy of the entire working-class neighborhood thanks to his relationship with Lucia (Eva Cela), the most gorgeous girl in town — the kind of older girl even little boys swoon over. (Kind of like Cindy Crawford in that Pepsi commercial.)
Since Tommaso is the only other member of his large family who seems interested in having a life outside their dead-end council estate, having a hot girlfriend is instantly associated in Rocco’s mind with coolness, independence, and escape.
A series of incidents forge an even deeper connection in young Rocco’s mind between sex and power — literally a superpower, in fact. Racial tensions between the ethnic Italians like the Tano family (that’s Rocco’s real surname) and the local Roma population run high, and Rocco’s kid brother suffers brain damage from a beating he received at their hands at the young age of five. When he dies, a distraught Rocco wanders the streets…and coincidentally retrieves a copy of a pornographic fumetto, or photo-comic, that floats down off a passing truck.
It’s called Supersex, it’s about a guy whose superpowers peak when he cums, and it’s the most fascinating thing Rocco has ever seen. He becomes the toast of the neighborhood kids, who are always eager to take a peak. But Rocco’s beautiful mother (Tania Garribba), who has historically neglected Rocco in favor of his brothers, gives him a ferocious lecture about the danger of “whores,” inspired by her pathological distaste for Tommaso’s relationship with Lucia. A devastated Rocco dutifully rips up his copy of Supersex and throws it out the window.
When the enterprising Roma kids pick up the pieces, though, Rocco’s not having it. He demands them back. Instead, he is sexually abused by the bullying kids right there in the town square, as they pull down his pants and violently stretch his penis. Tommaso rescues him with a switchblade, and reassures him that thanks to that stretching, he’ll now have the biggest dick in their big-dicked family.
Earlier, Tommaso had lectured Rocco that “men and women have dynamite between their legs,” that sex is the electricity that runs the world, and whoever controls it has power. Everyone in their neighborhood has the same goal, he tells Rocco: “They want to fuck beautiful women, and they want to stop being poor, and the two are always connected.” For both brothers, sex and success are forever inextricable. The bullying incident only reinforces that.
But fate is not through with these brothers. When a curious Rocco sneaks into Lucia’s apartment, he catches his first glimpse of a nude woman in the flesh, his first glimpse of a flesh-and-blood woman’s vagina, while she’s in the process of cheating on Tommaso. He dutifully reports this to his mother, who confronts Tommaso about it in public, brutally insulting both parties.
Tommaso, too, apparently places great weight on his relationship with Lucia. He too sees success with beautiful women as a sign that he’s more than just the Italian equivalent poor white trash. “I’m not a reject!” he shouts at his mother, heartbreakingly. “She loves me, Mom! Do you understand?”
Tommaso beats the shit out of the kid who has the remnants of Supersex and gives it back to Rocco. Then, at the plaintive request of Lucia, who is dying inside from being everyone’s sex symbol — “Take me away from here,” she tells him, “their eyes are killing me” — he pops the question.
But when he marries her, no one from the family shows up. Rocco never sees him again — except as a haggard, possibly ghostly older man (Adriano Giannini) following him around at the convention years later, which is impossible, because he apparently killed himself some time before.
Then the final piece of the puzzle slips into place. Until now, Rocco has only admired the beauty of women, without connecting them to the pleasure he can experience with his own body. That changes when, having retrieved all the pieces of Supersex and painstakingly taped them back together, he masturbates to the comic for the first time. When he looks up, he sees his mother (whether or not she can tell what he’s doing is unclear, but given her personality I doubt it), who after all this time finally looks at him and smiles. That’s the moment he cums for the very first time, imagining hugging Tommaso in the process.
Writing this all out, I simply can’t get over what showrunner Francesca Manieri and director Matteo Rovere have achieved here. This complicated cauldron of oedipal, fraternal, sadomasochistic, abusive, exhibitionistic, voyeuristic, objectifying, deifying, pornographic, artistic, and masturbatory sexual energy, coupled with intense maternal/familial/Italian Catholic guilt and shame…well, if things turned out better for you then congratulations, but never in my entire life have I seen the kind of ugly, beautiful, fucked-up, hot shit that creates a person’s future sexuality during their youth represented on screen so thoroughly and unsparingly.
Without going into great detail, its resonant frequencies with my own experiences growing up Irish Catholic on Long Island fifteen years later were, literally, physically overwhelming. I spent an hour or so after watching the episode running to the bathroom or kitchen sink to retch. It ruined my day.
I’ll say it one more time: Good. For a biopic about Rocco freaking Siffredi called Supersex to conjure up such powerful childhood memories, for it to respect experiences of abuse and awakening enough not to pull a single punch in depicting them…It’s certainly not what I expected of this thing. It’s beyond what I expected of this thing. This is a serious show, doing serious work, about a serious topic: sex. After this fearless first episode I am anxious, in every sense of the word, to see what it does next.
Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.
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