Voglia di guardare

I saw this movie in the late 1980's as a Showtime late-night presentation, dubbed in English and titled, "Peep Show". I was very enamored of it at the time, and found Europeans to be strange and intriguing. I did not know what a bidet was at the time, and thought that the star was washing herself in a toilet.

I recorded it back then, and just found my old VHS tape of this film! It would be fun to get a better copy of this one.

Voglia di guardare presents itself as a sultry exploration of desire and discontent, yet it's more mood piece than meaningful cinema. Set against the warm-toned, hazy backdrop of Italy, the film crafts an atmosphere steeped in soft lighting and gauzy filters. The cinematography leans heavily on voyeuristic framing, capturing bodies in motion and stasis with a deliberate sense of detachment. Visually, it's alluring at first, but the repetition of similar shots and lack of narrative progression drain it of tension or intrigue.

The acting hovers somewhere between functional and ornamental. Jenny Tamburi gives a performance that occasionally hints at interior life, but is largely lost under flat dialogue and stilted direction. Marino Masé, as her inattentive husband, is competent but unremarkable. The standout, if there is one, is Lilli Carati, whose screen presence holds a certain charge even when the script gives her little to do beyond seductive glances and breathy monologues. Her charisma suggests a depth the film never quite commits to exploring.

The central problem here is pacing. For a film so focused on eroticism, it often feels listless. Scenes stretch without momentum, characters drift without motivation, and the erotic charge fades into something inert. D'Amato crafts a glossy surface, but there's little beneath it to hold the viewer. Moments that should feel transgressive or passionate instead register as static and artificial.

You have to hand it to the late Joe D'Amato: unlike his fellow prolific Euro-exploitation hack Jess Franco, he certainly could not be accused of making the same movie over and over again. Case in point: this 80's softcore porn film which for about the first half seems like a Douglas Sirk melodrama about a neglected housewife (Jenny Tamburi) who has a love affair with a friend of her husband's (albeit with a few fully-clothed sex scenes and a bizarre scene where her voyeuristic husband watches her "freshening" herself in the bidet). This movie, at least at first, is a far cry from the lurid sex and violence, we've come to expect from the infamous Joe D. Finally, though the movie takes several implausible turns when her lover takes her to a brothel and convinces her to service a number of (uniformly unattractive) strange men, and we finally get to see the impressive female cast (Tamburi, Lili Karati, and Laura Gemser) naked.

This movie is obviously another knock-off of Luis Bunuel's "Belle du Jour", but its more original than most. It turns out, for instance, that the whole thing has been masterminded by the voyeuristic husband and he has convinced his friend (who is apparently the "gigolo" of the English title, although none of this movie actually takes place at "midnight")to help out since he is the co-owner of this brothel. Complications ensue when the friend falls in love with the wife, which in turn raises the ire of his female partner and lover (Lili Karati).

Although very atypical for D'Amato, this movie is not a total failure largely because he has a much better cast than usual. Jenny Tamburi was always a very underrated actress, even if it is strange seeing her play a mature woman here as opposed to the teenage "Lolita" roles she was typecast throughout almost the entire decade of the 70's. She is perhaps a little past her prime physically, but still quite sexy. Lili Karati looks pretty much as hot as ever, but she seems to have matured as an actress here from when she started out in the late '70's (it was unfortunate that this was about the time hardcore drug abuse led her into the hardcore porn industry). Exploitation legend and perennial D'Amato collaborator Laura Gemser has a completely superfluous supporting role, but she's about the same as ever. A bit strange, but worth seeing if you're a fan of any of these people.