Tendre et perverse Emanuelle

This is not an official French "Emmanuelle" film, nor is it an unofficial "Emanuelle" ("Black Emanuelle") Italian copycat from the series created by Albertino Bitti and Joe D'Amato; it is a Franco film all the way with the title slapped on only as an afterthought. Unfortunately though, it's just not a very good Franco film. It's really a murder mystery where the main character, an unhappily married pianist (alternately called both Barbara and Emanuelle) is found dead at the bottom of a cliff at the very beginning of the movie--a victim of either suicide or murder--and it's up to her shrink (Jack Taylor) and sister-in-law (Lina Romay)to investigate.

Truth be told, I was drawn to this movie by some tantalizing stills of Lina Romay wearing some very 70's-style sunglasses (and pretty much nothing else), the version I saw of this movie though was pretty skimpy on the nude scenes of both Romay and another equally beautiful Franco regular, Alice Arno. There were only some lesbian scenes between Romay and the more obscure lead actress who played "Barbara/Emanuelle", but they were pretty obscure in a different sense--I could barely make them out. I suspect this problem will be taken care of when, like pretty much the entire Franco back catalogue, this movie gets an official DVD release. A more permanent problem is that it simply does not have a very compelling plot and it seems to be a pretty lackluster effort by Franco and everyone else involved. It's better than the execrable WIP films Franco and Romay made right after, but definitely a step down from the interesting stuff Franco was doing in the late 60's and early 70's. See it if you've got a sunglasses (or Lina Romay) fetish, but for everyone else, watch it at your own peril.