There's a fine line between the personal and the narcissistic, between artists revealing hard truths about themselves and artists merely inviting viewers to bask in their luminosity. But the first look at Marco Filiberti, the Italian writer-director-star of Adored: Diary Of A Male Porn Star, leaves no question: Greased up and straddling a motorcycle, with little to cover his 26-centimeter penis (for the metric-averse, that's 10.24 inches), Filiberti allows the camera to drink in his flowing blond locks, his piercing eyes, and every inch of his glistening body. And at night, his Adonis character comes home to his penthouse apartment, where a wall-sized, half-nude photograph of himself hangs over the bed.
Of course, wealth and fame aren't enough for Filiberti, who needs smaller stars in his glorious constellation. Adored being an Italian melodrama, one arrives in the form of a moon-eyed orphan boy (Edoardo Minciotti), but rather than shedding his narcissism, Filiberti and his movie just give it a maudlin new dimension. Not only is he the country's hunkiest studmuffin, but behind those ripped pectorals beats a heart of gold, one so pure that it may not be long for this world. Adored stands at the crossroads where Telemundo and beefcake magazines collide, but for strangers to that intersection, the film's camp value is exceeded only by its tedium.
The soupy narrative opens in Rome in 2014, flashes back to April 2004, and then flashes back again to the south of France in 1999, where the now-Proustified Filiberti reunites with his estranged brother (Urbano Barberini) after their father's death. Shortly after the siblings return to Rome to sort out the legal issues, the straitlaced Barberini is initially shocked to discover Filiberti's true occupation, but it doesn't take him long to overcome it. One scene later, Barberini is admiring his brother's cock, watching him administer blow jobs on set (where Barberini passes out comically), and clubbing with him until dawn. Things take a dramatic turn, however, when they witness a young mother die in a car accident, and Filiberti forges an emotional connection to the dead woman's 6-year-old son.
Interspersed with documentary footage from 15 years later, when the grown-up kid tries to immortalize his would-be father, Adored adds layers of self-importance to a tale that's screwed up well enough on its own. Chronically unable to parse out the cheese from the cheesecake, Filiberti sees himself as both a sex symbol and an artiste: Depending on his mood, the music varies from Mozart's The Marriage Of Figaro to '80s-pop dance numbers that wouldn't sound out of place on the Footloose soundtrack. By the time Filiberti gets to a montage in which he grinds onstage in a Santa cap, plays soccer with the boy, gets blown, and buys groceries, the mixed messages have spiraled into chaos.