5/10
Family drama, Franco style
17 April 2009
One of the most obscure Franco's i've had the privilege to see. Or rather see the first hour of because after that the frame just freezes on my (very murky) copy, leaving the confused viewer to wonder what the hell happened. OK, I admit it, I didn't understand a thing but it seems to be some kind of perverse, kinky, black comedy/ironic family-drama/soft porno? Only in the mind of Jess Franco... A family is living together on an isolated island and the family idyll is sometimes disrupted by PC stuff like the daughter masturbating in front of her father (i'd say a good third of the film consists of Lina jacking off), the mother forcing her children to take part in S/M games or Lina giving her retarded sister a handjob. "We're a happy family, we're a happy family hey mum and daddy", as the Ramones song goes. There's a lot of lot of seemingly misplaced, mindless chattering (which I didn't understand of course) during all the weird and sick stuff going-ons, so I would guess the film is wittier and more intelligent than first seems (much like The Inconfessionable Orgies of Emmanuelle I guess, in which the dry, sarcastic tone got lost completely in the language barrier until the subtitled DVD release revealed a much better film than thought at first). But all in all it's safe to say that this no budget wonder is for francophiliacs only. I don't know whether I should consult a film buff or a psychiatrist, but why the hell did this film somehow remind me of a perverted Douglas Sirk?
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