While waiting for a lover to drop by, Siv (Essy Persson) flashes back to a time when she was shy, innocent, but curious about sex. The fact she had an uptight fiancé didn’t help much. While working as a nurse, she catches the eye of an older, experienced, and married patient named Heinz (Preben Mahrt) who deflowers her and encourages her to explore her sexuality. She soon breaks things off with her fiancé and moves to the big city where she finds more lovers to satisfy her needs.
I, a Woman was one of the pioneering films in the first wave of Swedish sexploitation. Directed by Mac (Around the World with Fanny Hill) Ahlberg, it contains a solid structure for this sort of thing. The nudity is tastefully done too with Persson mostly being seen in the buff via her reflection in the mirror or through a lacy curtain. Ahlberg does some stylish stuff along the way too, like superimposing a church choir over Essie’s first sexual experience as a way to contrast sexual and religious ecstasy. I also enjoyed the ending, which stops short of making any moral judgments on Essie’s actions, but merely presents where they have led her.
While Ahlberg shows restraint, it’s almost to a fault. Since it was an early version of the genre, it was able to skate by at the time with artiness and tastefully done sensual scenes. That’s a double-edged sword though because that also means being among the first of its kind, it unfortunately lacks a lot of the unbridled horniness and rampant T & A that hallmarked later iterations of Swedish smut. The trade off, and it’s an acceptable one, is that we learn what makes Persson’s character tick. We understand her motivations and desires and because of that, it works as a fleshed-out character study, even if our character doesn’t show off a ton of flesh.
Best line: “You have erotic delusions of grandeur, my dear!”
Two sequels, both helmed by Ahlberg, followed.
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