Lady Martine (Lina Romay) comes home to her mansion after an extended stay in the nuthouse. Upon her return, she is shocked to learn her husband, the Marquis, has now shacked up with a young man who caters to all his whims. One day, the duo finds an unconscious nun on the road, and they bring her home and have their way with her. When the Marquis spurns his wife’s advances, she runs to seek solace in the arms of the nun. Once the Marquis learns from his wife’s doctor that any kind of excitement will further disturb her and sex will probably kill her, he and his two lovers set out to drive her out of her mind.
With Jess Franco at the helm working from a story by Marquis de Sade, you know you’re in for a good time. Sinfonia Erotica contains all the ribaldry, debauchery, and just plain sleaze you’d expect from a de Sade adaptation directed by Franco. Sure, it’s another one of those “Let’s Drive Someone Crazy and Steal Their Money” movies, but it’s got to be the kinkiest one I have ever seen in the subgenre. It even contains some surprising gay and bisexual scenes, which are only fitting, I suppose. I mean Franco had directed hundreds of lesbian scenes by this point in his career. Fair is fair. What’s good for the gander is good for the goose, after all.
Romay is excellent as the mentally unstable lady of the house. (Who unfortunately is saddled with a bad blonde wig.) The scene where she prays to Jesus (Christ, not Franco) that her husband will finally fuck her is especially powerful. Hemingway is also captivating as the young nun who is slowly transformed into a manipulative nympho.
What makes Sinfonia Erotica an upper-tier Franco offering is that it even manages to keep your attention during the smut-free sections. Franco employs effective use of long shadows, odd camera angles, and echo-y sound effects to enhance the feeling of Romay’s fragile state of mind. He also gets a lot of mileage from the Franz Liszt score, which evocatively sets the mood. Sure, the ending is predictable, and the pacing drags here and there, but the sex scenes (especially the ones featuring Romay) are steamy.
We have a few Jess signatures at play here. There are all the slow camera pans and zooms to nothing in particular that you’ve come to expect. This was also yet another movie based on a story by Marquis de Sade (see also Justine and Eugenie) and there’s a bit of nunsploitation in there too. As far as Franco’s stock player company, there’s of course, his muse, Lina Romay as well as Susan (Love Letters of a Portuguese Nun) Hemingway, who yet again plays a sexy nun.
AKA: Erotic Symphony.
No comments:
Post a Comment