Director Andrew Blake finally names a film after those XXX perfume commercials he's been suspected of making all along.

Tres elegante. That's about the best way you can sum up any of Blake's filmic essays on sex, texture, and fashion all done with a manicured edge sharp enough to slice hard cheese. They're high tech facsimiles of the dream state, a little contrived sometimes, but still, charmed particles in the quantum mechanics of adult film making. If you think House of Dreams or Night Trips are something else, with Hidden Obsessions, Blake touches chords he was merely fiddling around with in previous efforts.

Someone had the good scenes to cast Penthouse Pet Janine Lindemulder in the lead role. Hers is a tricky name that might have your tongue doing the lambada with your teeth were it not for the fact that you'll spend the better part of the film, reeling it in from below your beltline in abject salivary approval. Janine doesn't negotiate hardcore in the strict sense in this film but she delivers a masturbatory edge and partners-up in girl/girl sequences that shouldn't leave you too dismayed. The woman definitely brings an earnestness to the party.

Janine is an uncommonly great-looking filly (though I could do without those dumb shoes she wears in this picture). Fans of hers will remember her appearance in Penthouse's slick Passport to Paradise. Here, she plays a mysterious woman who makes a living by writing sensuous stories for a collector of erotica. Don't look for an involving storyline because the cast credits must read longer than the script's dialogue.

Janine's sensuous tale come to life as she writes, each of which has a visual impact equivalent to a left hook and a right cross. Evander Holyfield might not have lasted twelve with the kind of visual barrage Blake offers up to the viewer.

Fans can play the "name the stars in the sex scene" game. (The who's who in what scene is listed at the end.) There are 16 scenes with resulting combinations of bodies that would confound a professor of finite mathematics.

The most talked-about scene will be the ice dildo session between Janine and Julia Ann in which their respective orifices are introduced to the business end of the sculpted penis as its twinkling droplets evaporate against their seething skin. Blake seems to make his best statements with water, and, later, a poolside tryst between Woody Long and Celeste invokes some of the classic images rendered in the Playboy Wet & Wild essays.

In a high tech bondage sequence co-starring Paula Price, Janine adopts the Betty Page look, and, in so doing, bears an uncanny resemblance to the queen of the pinups. Later, Janine and Kym Wilde engage in an anal bead session that's accompanied by soft, undulated jazz tones.

Each sex scene is enforced by a strong sense of its own personality, identity and camera movement. We're involved, first from a curiosity standpoint, then, in a subtle turn of the screw, we're nailed as a repeat customer. At least, that was my reaction from the Skye Blue/Tracy West matchup which looks like it's taking place on an industrial-strength jungle gym or the underwater extravaganza featuring P.J. Sparxx and Kym Wilde. Compelling is an overwrought word in film reviewing, but these are two scenes that beg for slow, thoughtful consumption.

Even with his style often imitated and circulated, Blake's vision never loses the capacity for creating awe and certain degree of astonishment. Count the number of times your jaw drops in Hidden Obsessions. And remember that smart store owenres will stock several copies of thier sexually stunning epic when it releases this month.