Cecilia

Cecilia (1982)

aka Sexual Aberrations of a Housewife

** (out of 4)

After being gang raped and then having sex with her husband, a woman (Vicky Adams) discovers that marital sex is a lot better when the relationship is open. This is an extremely rare film from Jess Franco but it's really a straight love story and not a sleazy effort. Franco treats the subject matter with full respect and tries his best to tell an honest story about marriage and the film remains interesting throughout, although not too much really goes on. Lina Romay has a small part as a sex teacher.

It is know that Jesus Franco did his fair share of total waste of time films. By that i mean films that dont have no reedeming qualities whatsoever. He also did a lot of very good ones and i like him a lot but Cecilia is not one of the good ones. This film is basically Emanuelle. That by itself is a huge disapointment for Jesus Franco enthusiasts because Emanuelle sucks really bad. But not only that this film is Emanuelle WITHOUT Sylvia Kristel and no one as interesting or charismatic to fill the gap. Lina Romay has a role in it but its quite insignificant. She has something like 5 minutes of screen time in total and even if she had more i doubt that it would be enough to make this one worthwile. The plot is very uniteresting, the soundtrack is very stock, the lead actress has no charisma, the locations are not particularly interesting either, some scenes go on forever (like the one where we see cecilia going back and forth horseback riding on the beach. And also it is way too long for its own good. Maybe if it was something close to 80 minutes it would be a little more tolerable but it isnt and it aint.

Most everybody in Cecilia has a beautiful body but nobody seems to know how to use them to their own advantage or the audience's. The film is an exercise in erotic/dramatic filmmaker, however the film's eroticism is so limited and tame - by today's standards - and the exposition so uninteresting that one has all they can do to stay interested. Not to mention the horrendous English-dubbing to only further turn off an excited viewer.

The film follows a woman named Cecilia, a dashing housewife known for tempting men with her gorgeous figure and beautiful assets. One day, Cecilia is victim to a violent assault in the back seat of her chauffeur's car that will forever change the way she has sex. Cecilia turns into a swinger, having sex with numerous different men and partaking in various orgies around town. Her loving husband, while understands his wife's desires and, because of that, begins to embrace an omnisexual lifestyle much like his wife's. Cecilia becomes entangled in what seems to be a crippling case of sex addiction and excess.

Cecilia is played by Muriel Montossé in a role of adequate significance despite the film being named after her. Montossé is gorgeous and possesses a desirable figure, and yet she's given so little to do and say that the dramatic portion of the story fails because the film's protagonist has so little interesting qualities. Montossé does well during some of the sex scenes, some involving multiple different parties, and for that, deserves acclaim to a certain extent. But yet, she can't seem to overcome the limitations and the stunning lameness of the screenplay.

The sex scenes only have a fair amount of eroticism to them. Many of the scenes bear the kind of ordinariness and dismissive qualities one could find by channel-surfing Cinemax after around 11pm. Given the time period of 1983, the sex scenes definitely had a racy factor to them for the time period, but a surprising thirty-one years later they fail to drum up much excitement.

The most noteworthy sex scene is an interracial one between Anthony Foster, who is white, and Ana Paula, who is black. The scene is pretty mild, like the bulk of the sex scenes in Cecilia but has charm because of interracial sex being a taboo at the time. The most noteworthy element of the scene is that Paula accentuates admirable sexual energy throughout the entire scene, although, like most of the film, it gets bogged down by its own blandness.

The scenes that do hold justice are the scenes where the film takes a poetry-in-motion approach to use long takes and sporadically-employed zooms to capture the beauty of life plus the inclusion of naked people. One particular scene in the beginning has the incomparable ability to ease as it involves a naked Montossé softly swimming and soaking in a medium-sized pond filled with flowers and lilypads. The scene is only alleviated in the sound department by the sounds of the water splashing and the quiet sounds of the bugs chirping. Surprisingly this is the scene of the film, along with a later one that assumes much of the same naturalistic characteristics of letting the environment speak for itself. The other scene involves Montossé (yes, nude again) listlessly wandering on an open beach with nothing but the sounds of rushing water and faint wind blowing the background. These scenes eventually lead to others that take place in the middle of the woods or in an explicitly green forest.

Famed pornographic director Jesús Franco directs the film with a strong emphasis on Raymond Heil's attractive, nature cinematography, providing the film with a visual layer that will likely go unnoticed with the prominence of skin. There are so many good pornographic works, however, that even genre-enthusiasts may question wasting their time with Cecilia. It's like a classy drinker of the finest tequilas popping into a liquor store for a bottle of Zarco. Why lower standards?

Starring: Muriel Montossé, Anthony Foster, and Ana Paula. Directed by: Jesús Franco.

I won't beat around the bush, as it's better to make a clean breast of all fleshly matters, so I'm coming clean about my avid appreciation of the splendidly smutty 80s classic, Cecilia. I have long been fervidly fixated with maestro, Franco's monobrowed, micro-budgeted, magisterially befleshed, bountifully bushed, pink-centric 80s output. This revealing expose of premature female emancipation is a gaudy delight of onanistic overkill and penetratingly hole-sum entertainment! Sadly, some more pedantic, pudenda-pounding pundits are often too 'hardon' this greasy-palmed expose of a morally liberated middle-class mademoiselle. I found Franco's scintillatingly skin-sational 'Cecilia' to be enticingly endowed with one of the sweetest openings I have ever seen in any exotic 'lotion picture'!

Happily, Franco's luridly investigatory camera leaves little to the viewer's imagination, as what lofty flights of far-flung cinematic fancy could ever really grope to match the perfectly pulchritudinous presence of the enchanting, sinfully statuesque starlet Muriel Montossé? With his fabulously frothy femme-fest, recidivist flesh-addict, Franco couldn't be any more voluptuously vainglorious! 'Cecilia' remains seamily stimulating and pleasantly degrading at the same time, which is, quite frankly, far more entertainment than a nimble-wristed wretch such as I deserve.

Jesús Franco's collaboration with Olivier Mathot on "Cecilia" represents one of the more problematic entries in the prolific director's vast filmography, a work that attempts to explore themes of sexual liberation and psychological trauma but ultimately collapses under its own misguided premise and exploitative execution. The film follows the wealthy aristocrat Cecilia through what the directors presumably intended as a journey of sexual awakening, but what emerges instead is a deeply troubling narrative that confuses exploitation with exploration.

Muriel Montossé delivers a performance that wavers between committed and confused, struggling to find emotional truth within a character whose motivations remain frustratingly opaque throughout the film's runtime. While Montossé possesses a certain screen presence and handles the film's more challenging scenes with professional determination, she cannot overcome the fundamental issues with her character's psychological development. Antonio Mayans, as her diplomat husband Andre, provides adequate support but remains largely relegated to a reactive role that fails to capitalize on his dramatic capabilities.

The film's visual approach reflects Franco's typical fascination with natural settings and intimate cinematography, with Raymond Heil's camera work occasionally capturing moments of genuine beauty in the rural French locations. However, these fleeting instances of visual poetry are overwhelmed by the film's more exploitative elements, which dominate the narrative to the detriment of any serious psychological exploration. The pacing suffers considerably, with lengthy sequences that feel more like padding than meaningful character development.

Franco's direction lacks the hypnotic quality that characterizes his better work, instead feeling perfunctory and uninspired. The film's attempts at exploring the psychological aftermath of trauma come across as superficial and potentially harmful, reducing complex emotional states to simplistic sexual scenarios. The supporting cast, including brief appearances by Lina Romay, fails to provide the charismatic energy that might have elevated the material above its fundamental flaws.

The production values remain serviceable but unremarkable, with adequate costume design and set decoration that establishes the wealthy milieu without particular distinction. The film's score contributes little to the overall atmosphere, often feeling intrusive rather than supportive of the narrative's emotional beats.

Ultimately, "Cecilia" suffers from a profound disconnect between its apparent ambitions and its actual execution, resulting in a film that neither succeeds as serious psychological drama nor as effective exploitation cinema. The work feels particularly dated in its treatment of sensitive subject matter, approaching complex themes with a casualness that undermines any potential for genuine insight or emotional resonance.