Isabella Rossellini’s Green Porno Spawns Seduce Me

In an alternate universe, I would start this review off by saying “Okay, Isabella Rossellini, we get it, you’re really into simulating animal sex, enough is enough.” But that would be the alternate universe where I don’t find Isabella Rossellini so very delightful — and as such, I’m happy to say “Carry on, Izzy” to her newest take on the reproductive habits of various species, Seduce Me.

Produced by the Sundance Channel, Seduce Me once again brings us the naughty and gleeful Rossellini playing around with the beautiful papercraft puppets and costumes that made Green Porno so much fun. In theory, this edition is meant to refocus the concept on behavior surrounding the act of reproduction, but the rebranding seems relatively meaningless, as Seduce Me is very much in line with past Green Porno installments.

But a few differences are apparent. For example, rather than open each episode with narration setting up a new species, there’s instead an intriguing lead-in which features a turtlenecked Rossellini teasing the method used by the creature in question. “What am I?” she exclaims, “A cuttlefish/duck/snake/salmon/bedbug?” And away we go.

In addition, the new episodes are more focused on penetration-based acts, as opposed to the more surprising and esoteric reproductive methods Green Porno delighted in — no asexual reproduction here, just hardcore bedbug-on-bedbug action. Seduce Me is also surprisingly more graphic — the Duck episode, for example, depicts copulation from both outside and inside a lady duck (turns out the vaginas of lady ducks are impressively complex), including enough thrusting to earn the film an NC-17 rating from the MPAA (provided, of course, that these were human beings and not ducks we were watching).

In an improvement over Green Porno‘s past installments, Seduce Me‘s Brightcove player has embedding enabled for one full episode, Cuttlefish. It is almost like Sundance wants this show to be spread on the Internet! Though let’s be honest, one embeddable episode is not an entire series.

But going to the Sundance Channel site means discovering a bonus feature I’ve missed up until now: Generate your Green Porno name! (Mine is “Yellow Tang” — sassy, right?) There is also additional scientific information courtesy of the official Green Porno biologist, Dr. Claudio Campagna, as well as a personality quiz.

As much as I love the Green Porno concept, I am pretty sure that at some point, I’m going to get tired of it. Seduce Me is possibly a step toward keeping the series relatively sustainable, though, and in the meantime I’m just glad that Rossellini has an outlet for her obsession — one that doesn’t just educate, but maybe even titillates (if you’re into that sort of thing).

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