In the elegant style of the beatifully-lit Hollywood films of the twenties and thirties, Maria Beatty portrays herself as an extreme vamp. Modelled on film stars such as Pola Negri, Louise Brooks and Marlene Dietrich, the erotic and dominant radiance of these stars is pushed to the extreme. Beatty develops a form of lesbian SM performance-art that is both classical and post-modern, both art and kitsch, both erotic and pornographic.