This Girl’s Life is one of those little hidden movie treasures that either drops into your lap, accidentally, or comes by way of a whisper into your ear. It dropped into my lap, now I’m whispering into your ear: run out and get this film.

Unlike This Boy’s Life which casts Robert DeNiro in a perpetual state of glazed hissy fit or Leonardo DiCaprio in provocative peekaboo Boy Scout outfits, This Girl’s Life, tells the story of a female porn star. But not just any porn star. Because, in the words of her sleazy porn mentor Mr. A., [Tomas Arana] with the shaved head, Moon is the Muhammad Ali of the Internet having risen to the top of the web cam heap after five years in the business.

From the moment she first walks into Mr. A’s office where she apparently has star written all over her girl next door kisser, Moon, at age 23, has the juice to pick the partners she’ll work with. And Mr. A’s obviously pressing her to renew her contract- a fact which is brought up to her on more than a couple of occasions.

Like a witness in a naked guy police lineup, Moon selects this new guy Marco because he’s young and innocent but turns down this old coot because he brags about his wrinkles, and Moon doesn’t even want to entertain the thought. You’ll get a kick when Mr. A reads off the salary schedule to Moon when she first walks into his office. Like your typical 18 year-old off of Van Nuys Blvd., Moon gawks in naive wonderment and asks the receptionist if those trophies on the mantel are porn Oscars.

Then Arana gives her the spiel and a tour of his studio which is probably more elaborate than most you’ll see in real porn. Moon can make $200 from a blow job, he tells her; $800 for a boy-girl scene and $1100 for an anal. Not too far off the mark.

Housewives, students, dancers, religious nuts, there’s no shortage of talent he also tells her which is the first step in deconstructing an applicant’s self-worth. Then in the same breath, he bolsters her ego by telling her she can go to the top because every guy wants to take someone like her home to mom.

“You’re gold,” Arana proclaims. “You’ve got a righteous ass and that speaks for itself.”

Which kind of bowls you over to hear because you’ll probably know Arana better as Quintus from the movie Gladiator- Maximus’ friend in the legions – who, when he’s not handing Russell Crowe strength and honor salutes, is ordered to arrest him for treason. After having her strip and showing him her fine, righteous ass, Arana gives Moon this Al Gore speech about his future plans for the Internet where he’ll be putting a naked webcam girl on every computer. You’d figure by 2003, when this film was released, that this has already been done. But, otherwise, director/writer Ash’s gritty Tarantinoesque script is a thing of pulp fiction beauty for its off-the-wall style and grace.

Moon’s played by the very exotic-looking and sexually beguiling [as you would gather from the boxcover] Juliette Marquis; and Marquis, who breaks the fourth wall by her ongoing chatter with the audience, insists throughout the movie that she’s in it for the sex, maybe even more so than the money.

Her mother, who fancied herself as a Bond girl because she did a walk-on in a 007 flick, committed suicide when Moon was 12. And Moon’s father, James Woods, is now a Parkinson’s Disease case maybe in part because of it. Moon has to wipe his ass for him, literally. And Woods’ character, who navigates the house like a spastic baby bird cracking from the egg, telling Moon’s friends entertaining stories about taking a shit in Morocco, tethers his daughter to the nest by guilt.

She’s on a blind date, and Woods calls Moon telling her that he’s just pissed his pants. Another time he’s cut himself and she, again, has to drop what she’s doing to attend to him.

Moon meets a guy on a blind date [Kip Pardue]. Resembling something of a young Denis Leary, Pardue cooks for her and claims he’s studying to be a prostate surgeon because he has a thing about old people. Then he finally admits that he’s a TV actor, albeit it not a very high profile one. Her turn. Moon’s not hesitant about revealing the fact that she’s a porn star, claiming that she’s not hurting anyone.

Finding this information hard to assimilate, Pardue pretty much consumes the rest of the date convincing Moon how open minded he is which is the first clue that he isn’t. You’d figure that a girl with street smarts would read him as superficial from the conversational hole Pardue keeps digging for himself, but Moon elects to adopt him as her grounding connection when things get kind of rough.

During a birthday party for her father, one of Moon’s school chums reacts similarly about her occupation, telling her that no normal girl watches porn much less stars in it. Yet another civilian friend isn’t above recruiting Moon to arrange a chance meeting with her fiance [a dead ringer for Alex Sanders with short hair] in a coffee shop to see if he’ll cheat on her.

Another friend recruits Moon to attempt a seduction of her husband [Michael Rapaport] who runs a used car lot. Here it gets really ugly, as Moon bargains to buy a car for $5,000 and negotiates the rest with sex. Either repelled by Rapaport, the Sean Penn of redheaded film actors, or by what she’s doing, Moon slips out the window of the ladies’ room only to be chased down and have her life threatened by Rapaport who’s just turned into Sean Penn. And Rapaport comes pretty close later on in a knife-to-the-throat-moment which any Tarantino film would love.

More proof that it’s sometimes not pretty being a porn star, Moon’s black girlfriend is scheduled to do a 20 man interracial gangbang, poolside. On second thought, she tells Arana she can’t do it. Three guys are her limit. Besides offering to co-sign for an SUV, Arana dangles $9,000 more than what was originally agreed upon. Then he shoves some coke up her nose. When that doesn’t work, he gets a little physical, and the scene’s lack of enthusiasm is fairly obvious.

You can also talk about porn crossovers into the mainstream all you want, but Cheyenne Silver rates her name on the boxcover as well as a speaking role. Silver plays one of Marquis’ cigar-smoking friends, and the first woman Marquis’ ever had sex with. It could have been total coincidence, but the casting seems to have been manipulated for the fact that Silver and Marquis share very pronounced similarities in facial features. When the two of them are called into the clinic because a mutual male partner has been discovered to have HIV, you’d figure that this scare alone would ignite some form of clarity under their hand-holding asses but it doesn’t.

Or when Arana’s interviewing a girl to discover that she’s underage, he tells her it’s illegal to have her doing intercourse but doesn’t seem to have an ethical problem if she’ll go down on someone for the webcams. Asked why she’s even considering porn, the girl answers, “I want to be famous- like in the real world.”

Real world my righteous ass.