The genre of film that is neither true, explicit porn, not even a serious movie. As it is done, the value is near zero. The music is not bad.
3 Reviews
French soft porn!
RodrigAndrisan3 November 2018
Pécas at Peak Perfection
Nodriesrespect20 July 2012
Warning: Spoilers
Embracing the explicit for all of two films, Max Pécas followed his well-received if conventionally constructed FELICIA - the sort of cautionary tale of the innocent interloper upsetting the wedded bliss of its protagonists that was Joe Sarno's bread and butter - with the considerably more creative LUXURE. An adult spin on Alain Resnais's art-house folly LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD, rightfully dreaded by any fledgling film school attendee, the movie liberally borrows yet tellingly gender-reverses the central conceit of a man trying to convince a woman that they have already met at the same swanky titular spa the year before along with some of its surreal trappings. Resnais's snooze-fest made a critic's darling out of regally refined Delphine Seyrig, an image the actress herself cheerfully shattered by slumming it in Harry Kümel's full-blooded vampire sexploiter DAUGHTERS OF DARKNESS. A similar though mirrored fate befell her carnal counterpart, the stunning Karine Gambier, whose increasingly dramatic physical appearance with severely plucked eyebrows and hair that went from a pleasing platinum to an otherworldly white relegated her to the portrayal of one note archetypes like the disquieting domestic in Francis Leroi's JE SUIS A PRENDRE or the monstrous prison warden in Erwin C. Dietrich's ISLAND WOMEN. Clearly, Pécas saw something in her that subsequent mentors missed as she has never been more subtle or emotionally compelling than playing the elusive Laura, whose motives remain tantalizingly vague throughout, sometimes shifting from one scene to another, readjusting the jigsaw narrative.
Dreams and reality commingle confusingly as our heroine checks in for her annual stay at the rural Two Oaks Hotel, possibly planning suicide in the wake of a ruptured relationship. Although she treats him with aloof disdain, the devious hotel manager (Pierre Dany) seems hip to her game, assigning her the adjoining room to happily humping honeymooners Peter (Richard Darbois) and Ursula, played by here today gone tomorrow starlet Corinne Lemoine (from Jean Rollin's eerie PHANTASMES), the film's only other female presence. Peter proves the spitting image of Laura's erstwhile paramour Jack, their images melding in her mind's eye for a succession of incidents that may or may not exactly occur as she and, by extension, we as the audience perceive them. While it's clear that they share some sort of history together, Laura steadfastly refuses the manager's increasingly persistent advances, until he appears to rape her, or does he ? Pécas playfully strings along his audience by throwing them an apparent lifebuoy in sorting out the intentional narrative confusion through the recurring appearance of mannequins on the sidelines, at one stage a character actually transforming into one right in the middle of the scene ! When Ursula briefly parts from her husband for a hair appointment, Laura moves in for the kill but who's the spider and who's the fly here ? Aware of their potentially disruptive transgression, the manager blackmails Laura into a basement orgy with big-dicked curly top Charly Schreiner (unfortunately dubbed with a voice that makes him sound like The Muppet Show's Gonzo), stalwart stud Richard Allan, proudly bisexual Carmelo Petix, portly middle-aged Jacques Insermini (unlikely star of Georges Fleury's excellent INTRODUCTIONS) and an uncredited fifth participant who's probably Jacques Couderc, an indefatigable performer from French porn's early days who frequently passed under the radar.
Hedging his bets, Pécas shot both this and FELICIA soft-core with hardcore inserts to assure entrance to multiple markets. While Gambier, and to a much lesser extent Lemoine, had no qualms performing their own penetration shots, mainstream refugees (and subsequent prodigal sons, finding their niche on French TV) Darbois and Dany resorted to stunt doubles for their participation. As the focus remains on the resplendent Karine throughout, the sex scenes barely suffer as a result, the group grope pile-up a predictably crotch-grabbing climax though the comparatively low key liaison between Laura and Peter (occasionally morphing into his mustachioed Doppelganger Jack) the entire movie builds towards proves no less potent.
Intriguingly, the labyrinthine screenplay's attributed to the director and fly by night Euro starlet Barbara Sommers, who was featured as the quintessential "ooh la la" French girl in a number of popular '60s blockbusters. A more risqué twilight turn in fellow fornication filmmaker Claude Mulot's LES CHARNELLES may have piqued Pécas's curiosity. As this seems her sole writing job, yet boasting that much-vaunted "feminine touch" so coveted by carnal cinema in its quest for increased social acceptability, it's interesting to speculate to what extent the credit might be a mere ruse to deflect conceivable cries of misogyny in light of some of its narrative's trickier twists. He need not have worried as his meticulous direction combines with Gambier's intricately shaded acting and the flawless technical achievements to craft one of Old World adult's crowning glories.
To anyone versed in French fornication film history, the redoubtable Roger Fellous needs little introduction, even at the time as his track record stretches back to the late '40s, his monochrome magic on Luis Bunuel's still sulfurous DIARY OF A CHAMBERMAID a particular standout. Flaunting polite society's rigid rules, he retained his real name as regular cinematographer to his creative com-padres like Pécas, Mulot, Leroi and Jean-François Davy, friendships forged in the trenches of Continental exploitation. Another Max mainstay, composer Derry Hall (who supplied the syrupy scores to the Sandra Julien serenade I AM A NYMPHOMANIAC) provided an atypically lush piano and strings arrangement, similarly lifting Luxure (which literally translates simply as Lust by the way) from the dreck the snail-scoffing contingent of the carnal cinema industry would all too soon stoop to.
Dreams and reality commingle confusingly as our heroine checks in for her annual stay at the rural Two Oaks Hotel, possibly planning suicide in the wake of a ruptured relationship. Although she treats him with aloof disdain, the devious hotel manager (Pierre Dany) seems hip to her game, assigning her the adjoining room to happily humping honeymooners Peter (Richard Darbois) and Ursula, played by here today gone tomorrow starlet Corinne Lemoine (from Jean Rollin's eerie PHANTASMES), the film's only other female presence. Peter proves the spitting image of Laura's erstwhile paramour Jack, their images melding in her mind's eye for a succession of incidents that may or may not exactly occur as she and, by extension, we as the audience perceive them. While it's clear that they share some sort of history together, Laura steadfastly refuses the manager's increasingly persistent advances, until he appears to rape her, or does he ? Pécas playfully strings along his audience by throwing them an apparent lifebuoy in sorting out the intentional narrative confusion through the recurring appearance of mannequins on the sidelines, at one stage a character actually transforming into one right in the middle of the scene ! When Ursula briefly parts from her husband for a hair appointment, Laura moves in for the kill but who's the spider and who's the fly here ? Aware of their potentially disruptive transgression, the manager blackmails Laura into a basement orgy with big-dicked curly top Charly Schreiner (unfortunately dubbed with a voice that makes him sound like The Muppet Show's Gonzo), stalwart stud Richard Allan, proudly bisexual Carmelo Petix, portly middle-aged Jacques Insermini (unlikely star of Georges Fleury's excellent INTRODUCTIONS) and an uncredited fifth participant who's probably Jacques Couderc, an indefatigable performer from French porn's early days who frequently passed under the radar.
Hedging his bets, Pécas shot both this and FELICIA soft-core with hardcore inserts to assure entrance to multiple markets. While Gambier, and to a much lesser extent Lemoine, had no qualms performing their own penetration shots, mainstream refugees (and subsequent prodigal sons, finding their niche on French TV) Darbois and Dany resorted to stunt doubles for their participation. As the focus remains on the resplendent Karine throughout, the sex scenes barely suffer as a result, the group grope pile-up a predictably crotch-grabbing climax though the comparatively low key liaison between Laura and Peter (occasionally morphing into his mustachioed Doppelganger Jack) the entire movie builds towards proves no less potent.
Intriguingly, the labyrinthine screenplay's attributed to the director and fly by night Euro starlet Barbara Sommers, who was featured as the quintessential "ooh la la" French girl in a number of popular '60s blockbusters. A more risqué twilight turn in fellow fornication filmmaker Claude Mulot's LES CHARNELLES may have piqued Pécas's curiosity. As this seems her sole writing job, yet boasting that much-vaunted "feminine touch" so coveted by carnal cinema in its quest for increased social acceptability, it's interesting to speculate to what extent the credit might be a mere ruse to deflect conceivable cries of misogyny in light of some of its narrative's trickier twists. He need not have worried as his meticulous direction combines with Gambier's intricately shaded acting and the flawless technical achievements to craft one of Old World adult's crowning glories.
To anyone versed in French fornication film history, the redoubtable Roger Fellous needs little introduction, even at the time as his track record stretches back to the late '40s, his monochrome magic on Luis Bunuel's still sulfurous DIARY OF A CHAMBERMAID a particular standout. Flaunting polite society's rigid rules, he retained his real name as regular cinematographer to his creative com-padres like Pécas, Mulot, Leroi and Jean-François Davy, friendships forged in the trenches of Continental exploitation. Another Max mainstay, composer Derry Hall (who supplied the syrupy scores to the Sandra Julien serenade I AM A NYMPHOMANIAC) provided an atypically lush piano and strings arrangement, similarly lifting Luxure (which literally translates simply as Lust by the way) from the dreck the snail-scoffing contingent of the carnal cinema industry would all too soon stoop to.
Imagination dominates.
alexferdman-986029 October 2019
There are at least 3 different versions of this flick and, of course, x-rated is the best. Soft-core version is now for kids and the point is this movie has everything for grown-ups. Somehow it connected to "Diversions" my another favored by imagination plot and in both cases its female affair. Plot kinda weak and music lousy--too bad.
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