There have been some decent and even thoughtful movies made about hookers -- "Belle de Jour", "Never on Sunday," "Scandal," for instance -- but this isn't one of them. The screen is filled with bouncing breasts, all of them the size and shape of watermelons, hefty behinds, and hirsute pundenda, male as well as female. Only the close ups have been eliminated to protect the guilty.
Debora Caprioglio is Paprika, a hooker in modern Italy with the face of an adolescent and the body of a female specimen of Homo sapiens that has brought the concept of reproduction and nurturance to its finest degree, divine in its generosity. Here she is, with her cute little innocent face and chirrupy voice, starting out in a Roman whorehouse inhabited by cheerfully naked girls, and with walls straight out of the red light district of Pompeii. This isn't hard-core pornography but it gets just as boring just as quickly.
Paprika is coopted by a pimp who mistreats her. It's no tragedy though. She's a sassy babe and gives as good as she gets. There's not a sad moment in the film, or an enlightening one. She falls for a sailor but before the affair can develop he's off to sea, promising he'll return.
He does in fact return at the end of the movie and by this time Paprika has married an elderly Count who drops dead at once, enabling Paprika to buy her sailor the cruise boat he's always wanted.
The intent of the director, Tinto Brass, seems not to merely entertain the audience, because this is anything other than entertaining, but to keep the viewer agape in his seat at the vulgarity.
An example? An attractive and likable whore is on her death bed in the brothel. A crowd has gathered around the dying woman and someone calls for a doctor. He emerges from the crowd in his underwear and claims it's too late to help her. "I want a priest," she croaks. A priest in black underwear, wearing a crucifix around his neck, pushes his way out of the crowd and takes her confession. The moribund young woman is completely naked and uncovered on the bed, her legs spread apart. And the director places the camera between her feet an shoots upward so that the wiry curls of her pubic symphisis in prominently featured in the shot. What is the point?
A poem by Oscar Williams we read in high school drifted into my consciousness.
"What lewd, naked and revolting shape is this? A frozen oxtail in the butcher's shop. Long and lifeless upon the huge block of wood On which the ogre's ax begins chop chop."
In the end, Paprika and a friend sit on a balcony and watch the sailor's cruise boat puffing along a river or lake, enjoying themselves no end. The camera drifts over and fixes on the cold, unyielding, marmorial glutes of a nude statue -- and stays there while the end credits roll. It's a fitting conclusion.
Debora Caprioglio is Paprika, a hooker in modern Italy with the face of an adolescent and the body of a female specimen of Homo sapiens that has brought the concept of reproduction and nurturance to its finest degree, divine in its generosity. Here she is, with her cute little innocent face and chirrupy voice, starting out in a Roman whorehouse inhabited by cheerfully naked girls, and with walls straight out of the red light district of Pompeii. This isn't hard-core pornography but it gets just as boring just as quickly.
Paprika is coopted by a pimp who mistreats her. It's no tragedy though. She's a sassy babe and gives as good as she gets. There's not a sad moment in the film, or an enlightening one. She falls for a sailor but before the affair can develop he's off to sea, promising he'll return.
He does in fact return at the end of the movie and by this time Paprika has married an elderly Count who drops dead at once, enabling Paprika to buy her sailor the cruise boat he's always wanted.
The intent of the director, Tinto Brass, seems not to merely entertain the audience, because this is anything other than entertaining, but to keep the viewer agape in his seat at the vulgarity.
An example? An attractive and likable whore is on her death bed in the brothel. A crowd has gathered around the dying woman and someone calls for a doctor. He emerges from the crowd in his underwear and claims it's too late to help her. "I want a priest," she croaks. A priest in black underwear, wearing a crucifix around his neck, pushes his way out of the crowd and takes her confession. The moribund young woman is completely naked and uncovered on the bed, her legs spread apart. And the director places the camera between her feet an shoots upward so that the wiry curls of her pubic symphisis in prominently featured in the shot. What is the point?
A poem by Oscar Williams we read in high school drifted into my consciousness.
"What lewd, naked and revolting shape is this? A frozen oxtail in the butcher's shop. Long and lifeless upon the huge block of wood On which the ogre's ax begins chop chop."
In the end, Paprika and a friend sit on a balcony and watch the sailor's cruise boat puffing along a river or lake, enjoying themselves no end. The camera drifts over and fixes on the cold, unyielding, marmorial glutes of a nude statue -- and stays there while the end credits roll. It's a fitting conclusion.