Overview:
If the world’s greatest filmmakers turned their hands to pornography, I wonder what the results would look like. Scorsese’s adult movies would be sprawling epics that show us tortured souls at war with themselves, their families, and an unresponsive God (and Gimme Shelter would play over a coke-fueled gangbang scene). Ozu would have definitely been more sedate, showing from one low angle simple, natural lovemaking between a husband and wife on a matted floor. What about the young guys, though? Wes Anderson would no doubt employ bold pastel colors, Futura Bold, and one of the Wilson brothers in some capacity. Would his pornopus (a tidy portmanteau of my own making, if I may brag) sport the title The Life Erotic? Doubtful. There is, after all, already an adult website using that very same title and, not surprisingly, there are no Kinks songs to be found anywhere in the vicinity. The Life Erotic is another in a long line of European erotica sites that pay strict attention to the alluring beauty of the female form. These women, however, aren’t held in the same chaste regard as many others. Instead, you’ll find their “beautiful pussy [sic], perky nipples, and raw female sexual energy” openly displayed on this site. Members are promised 1080p High Definition videos, “super close up pussy with a life-size option” (which I take to mean there are high resolution images online), and the talents of one Walter Bosque, photographer, videographer and general man about town. The preview images definitely look a bit more explicit than your average Eurotica (check out me and my portmanteaus) website, with self-lubricated pussies showing their excitement as a model’s fingers slip inside sitting side-by-side with more refined images of statuesque beauties reclining in nature’s splendor. It’s almost too much to handle, so let’s make like those slender feminine fingers and slip into something more exciting, shall we?

The members’ area of The Life Erotic opens with a welcome note from the webmasters. “Thank you for becoming a member, we are relatively new but growing quickly. For now you may not find the same quantity of content as some older sites - you will however find unmatched quality with a much edgier and more explicit treatment of "erotic art".” Beautiful. Beautiful and promising. Digging further you’ll find a sleek design with greys, blacks, and earthy tones imparting maturity and dignity. A calendar of updates is shown on the homepage and it tells us that new content arrives twice a week on Tuesdays and Fridays. There definitely appears to be more photo than video content coming into the archive, but video fans will no doubt be pleased to find that all are featured in HD formats. Menu links take you directly to all of The Life Erotic’s girl-on-girl content (eight galleries, no videos), the 16 HD videos, and a model index that displays portraits of all 85 models currently featured on the site. These beautiful European women unfortunately haven’t been given proper profile pages, merely a page of links to their online work. It’d be lovely to find out more about them, their tastes, their backgrounds, and fuller profiles would definitely fill out the site and make it of more thorough meditation on female erotic beauty. Wait… that sounds like every other Eurotica website. I thought The Life Erotic was supposed to be more explicit, more dynamic than all of those pretentious pseudo-artistic wankfests. Have we, dear readers, been lied to yet again by another over-eager webmaster? 

No, of course not. Don’t be silly. The people behind The Life Erotic are far too considerate of their fans to be outright deceitful. They did, after all, take the time and effort to give you, the new member, a proper welcome to the site and encourage feedback whenever you might feel it’s warranted. They don’t seem like the untrustworthy type to me. After landing on a gallery page, you’ll find this out for yourself. Take the most recently added gallery, Juana Luna and Lacuma in Raw, as an example. Images are classy, yet a little more explicit and raunchy than most of The Life Erotic’s competitors, showing one of the models crouching down exposing her various vaginal components in great detail. You’ll get a trio of online viewing options – screen size (664x1000), over size (1328x2000), and life size (2848x4000 pixels) – all of which accommodate the different preferences of users. “Life size” images obviously aren’t literally named, but they do present a highly detailed view of the models, their luscious bodies, and pretty faces. When content does get quite explicit – with either one or two women pleasuring themselves (or each other) as only they know how – that detail becomes even more exciting. The beads of moisture on bare pussy lips; droplets of sweat running down a cheek; nipples erect to attention; all of these symptoms of intense sexual arousal are displayed beautifully. The only real letdown in the photo department is that there’s only one zip archive available and it’s for the life size images, which I’m sure not everyone will have a need for. That’s hardly a major complaint though.

Video content can be downloaded in WMV and MOV 1080p HD formats only. No small frames here, gents. You can stream at 432 and 720p if you wish – and both look quite good and load quickly – but there’s no competing against the big boy. At 1920x1080 pixels, these videos look as clear as you could possibly want them. The models are rendered perfectly and the light, airy soundtrack brings you close to them without being dull and uninspiringly “lifelike”. With runtimes being quite short – only five or six minutes in most cases – file sizes are quite low, which makes downloading the HD videos a pretty quick process. The server speeds were consistently fast throughout the researching (read: drooling) and writing (read: ogling) necessary for this review. Delightful!

You might think that The Life Erotic would include untold treasures of the bonus variety. That’s unfortunately not the case with the site. The only real bonus included here is a page of webcams that appear to have been adopted from Met Art, another high quality Eurotica site. While not particular impressive or worthy of your devoted attention, the cam shows make for a nice distraction every now and then. Signing up to The Life Erotic will require you to lay down $19.99 for a 30-day recurring membership, $29.99 for a non-recurring take on the same plan. Signing up for 90 or 365-day memberships will bring you a small but significant saving. But is that really all The Life Erotic requires of you? Perhaps a profession of erotic intent should be noted and approved before you can join. Wouldn’t it be a shame to fuck-and-run on a classy site such as this? Doesn’t the low content count make that appealing, though? Follow me as I make a few pointed closing arguments for and against this proposed change in lifestyle and decide one and for all whether The Life Erotic is for me. Whether or not it’s for you only you can decide.

Pros:
- Beautiful European models adorn the pages of The Life Erotic, showing their amateur beauty in a clean, direct way.

- Updates arrive twice a week, with a new HD video landing every Friday.

- Everything you’ll see here is completely exclusive and an original work by photographer Walter Bosque.

- The High Definition videos and hi-res photos are a sight to behold. Incredible detail and ample opportunity for arousal abound.

Cons:
- As a fairly young site, The Life Erotic needs time to grow and mature into something undeniably worthy of your money.

- The discrepancy in quantity between galleries and video updates is significant – almost 10:1.

- Some additional user-end features and full model profiles would definitely aid browsing.

- Some older galleries only offer one image size, the far too small 1024x768.

Conclusion:
The Life Erotic makes a bold statement of intent as soon as you first lay your eyes on the cleanly designed entrance page. Claiming to offer more explicit European erotica than their competitors, this is one site that seems to have found a mostly untouched niche and grasped it with both hands. With HD video and hi-res photo content that’s so clear it’ll make your eyes water, The Life Erotic manages to make a pretty persuasive argument for membership. It might be a good idea to hold for a couple of months, however; let’s wait and see how the currently diminutive archive looks then. I’m betting it’ll be even more enticing.