An Autobiography of Michelle Maren

Michelle Maren, a former beauty pageant winner and porn performer, contacted director Michel Negroponte after she saw his 1995 film, Jupiter's Wife, suggesting that he make one about her. In their joint documentary, Maren doesn't just speak to the camera, but also shot the video-diary footage herself, emerging as an engaging, if also self-dramatizing presence. When she was seven, Maren's white father abandoned her black mother, and because her mother was abusive, she left home at the age of 17. Due to a chemical imbalance and degenerative disc disorder, Maren takes several medications a day, attends therapy twice a week, and collects disability. In her younger days, she worked as a sex surrogate and an escort before (briefly) turning to porn films, including a 1984 sequel to Deep Throat. Between 18 and 33, she held a total of 58 jobs. In 1985, Maren contacted her father, who said he was happy to hear from her, but after six months he changed his mind about staying in touch. At that point, Maren's binge-eating began (a problem she still struggles with today), although she went on to graduate from college before mental illness made regular work impossible. In the film, she talks to her father on the phone and visits her mother in the hospital, but neither is doing well, so she is unable to work through issues from the past. Instead, she reaches out to family members for answers, while also taking tentative steps to enter the wider world again. A powerful portrait of a woman with a painful history struggling to find peace in the present, this is recommended. Aud: C, P. (K. Fennessy)