‘Elektra Luxx’: Movie with porno theme is more talky than smutty

For a movie about a porn star quitting the business because she becomes pregnant, “Elektra Luxx” is surprisingly modest. Titillation-seekers will need to shop elsewhere, because this movie is mostly about people talking.

The porn star in question, named Elektra and played by Carla Gugino, is at the center of this ensemble picture, which takes a number of detours from its central situation. Because Elektra teaches a class in “How to Make Love Like a Porn Star,” we meet some of her students and learn their stories along the way.

One subplot is about a pair of adult-entertainment actresses (Adrienne Palicki and Emmanuelle Chriqui, who belong in a rhyming dictionary together) on vacation. One wants more than friendship from the other.

There’s also a porn blogger (Joseph Gordon-Levitt, of “Inception”) whose obsession with Elektra makes him slow on the uptake with a real-live woman (Malin Akerman, from “Watchmen”) when she visits him in what appears to be his mother’s basement.

If the joke about the blogger in his mother’s basement sounds stale, stick around — there’s more where that came from. Writer-director Sebastian Gutierrez, picking up characters he created in the 2009 film “Women in Trouble,” is a little too on-the-nose with his observations and ironies here.

The cast is surprisingly good, given the circumstances. Maybe the actors were drawn to the movie because it’s so word-driven; the entire film is built around dialogue scenes, usually between two people, which explore a topic until it’s done to death.

Timothy Olyphant plays a man who more-or-less accidentally falls into bed with Elektra, as the result of a misunderstanding. Vincent Kartheiser (“Mad Men”) is a naked man in an elevator, and Marley Shelton and Justin Kirk float through for brief vignettes. Oh, and Julianne Moore appears as the Virgin Mary, in a one-scene performance that comes out of nowhere.

Gutierrez wants to create a playful mood in the film, where anything goes and everything is all right. That may speak well of him, but it makes the movie feel untethered to any particular argument or viewpoint. It looks like an acting workshop tied together with a central character.

Carla Gugino has been so engaging and so under-appreciated for so long that she’s passed the point of waiting for a big breakthrough and seems to have settled into being an interesting actress (she has lately found exposure on TV in “Entourage” and “Californication”). She and Gutierrez will continue Elektra’s saga in the forthcoming “Girl Walks Into a Bar,” which one hopes will be the final word on this subject.

“Elektra Luxx” ½

Different story lines converge around the figure of a porn star (Carla Gugino) who is quitting the business after becoming pregnant. The movie’s very chaste, despite its subject, and it lacks any particular viewpoint on the various scenes that roll past. The surprisingly good cast includes Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Timothy Olyphant.

Rated: R for language, subject matter, nudity

Showing: Pacific Place