1986
Italy
Director: Piero Schivazappa
Cast: Serena Grandi, Alberto di Stasio
Serena Grandi
*CONTAINS REFERENCES TO ADULT
MATERIAL*
Simona (Serena
Grandi)
a leotard clad aerobics instructor, is bored with her marriage, and
with
her aeroplane and boxing obsessed husband Mario. Slowly Simona
lowers
herself into a world of dangerous sexual liaisons, mostly with
unknown
men. The first two liaisons she is partly taken by force, but she
does not resist, as she half desired the encounter in the first
place.
During her third such encounter, one which she is protesting at, she is
found out by her husband, who dulls the intruder's ardour with his
foot,
and then beats his wife.
This leads to an inevitable break up during which he retaliates to her infidelity by screwing his part time musician neighbour. Due to Simona's bad/good timing she finds out about this, and hereafter refuses to return to her married life, after her husband's persistence for her to do so.
Simona decides that what she needs to cure her of her potentially dangerous desires is a child. She makes a visit to a gynaecologist (Robert from Lamberto Bava's gooey necrophiliac grotesquerie, Macabre/Frozen Terror/Macabro, 1980) whom has already lain his seed at her altar. She has her IUD removed and endeavours to get pregnant as quickly as possible.
Simona never has full control over her liaisons, which means anyone of her lovers could go further than she would like, or had fantasised about. But she is willing to take this risk.
Soon after this Simona is
subjected
to a 100% unwanted sexual assault, after which she finds out who the
rapist
was, and decides to turn her back on her licentious distractions and
return
to her former life.
Serena Grandi (for those who may not know) is the voluptuous queen
of spaghetti erotica. From Tinto Brass's fetishistic Miranda
(1985)
To Sergio Martino's psycho-erotic-thriller, Craving Desire (1993),
where
she unfortunately played second fiddle to Vittoria Belvedere. And
this where she again displays her ample charms, as she had in Miranda
the
year before.
The film brings to mind G.W. Pabst's 1929 silent masterpiece Pandora's Box, which brought the world the beautiful Louise Brooks (and the 'bob' hairstyle) as Lulu, though Lady Of The Night is nowhere near as good or as ground breaking as that. Pandora's Box did the selfish, libertine woman thing nearly fifty years earlier, and still packs more punch than this. And in no way was Simona going to get a bloody ending for her sins like Lulu did. But maybe the cracks in the ground appear, as Lulu was lead to the slaughter for her crimes and Simona only raped and then decided to return to the family fold. Maybe Pandora's Box was more a lesson in staying put than this was, and maybe even more conventional, once you get past Lulu's libertinage that is!
The film seems like a misogynist's wet dream, rather than a plunge into the fantasies of women. Though there are people who fantasise and participate in such anonymous sexual shenanigans, the rape fantasy theme is a little of a more dangerous area to be covering. Especially when the character turns her pretty tail and goes back from whence she came. And what is probably supposed to an anti conventional, indignation raising, and ground breaking delve into dark dangerous fantasies, turns out to be a totally conventional lesson, that Simona should have stayed where she was and been happy with what she had.
The version that was released by
Angel
Films, in the UK, was cut by our scissors happy censors by almost 3
minutes.
Which is absolutely ludicrous considering the current climate of
censorship
in the UK. Where hard core sex scenes, including "money shots"
were
passed uncut in
Lars Von Trier's "The Idiots", and Catherine Breillat's,
UK censorship
ground breaking, but boring as hell "Romance".
Review By Giovanni Pistachio,
Giovanni
can be contacted at: - giovanipistachio@netscape.net
 And Just on the off chance that someone may be interested here is Serena Grandi with clothes on, JUST! |
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