A wealthy European art collector visits a brothel run by a high-class madam (Mandy Rice-Davies). There he encounters a black prostitute "Venus" (Jacqueline Jones), who is working in a room tastefully decorated to resemble the antebellum American South. He remembers that he met this girl before when years earlier he introduced her to a talented but starving artist. The collector then imagines events "as they might have happened" where the beautiful prostitute becomes a muse for the artist, inspiring a sculpture he calls "Black Venus". But the artist is ashamed he can't support his new love financially, so they break up, he descends into alcoholism, while she shacks up with a wealthy woman (Karin Schubert) whose husband is away. When the husband returns, he takes umbrage at his wife's sapphic relationship and takes, uh, revenge by forcing his own teenage mistress (Florence Guerin) on the black woman. The wife finds out, and both the black woman and the teenage mistress are kicked out of the house and end up in the brothel. The film then returns to the "present day" as the collector decides to "collect" the black woman, the teenager, AND the sculpture and take them all to scenic Spain (where they can frolic naked in the surf and comb each other's pubic hair). But the now-deranged artist is in hot pursuit. . .
This is one of a series of early 80's softcore sex movies co-produced by European producer/writer Harry Alan Towers (aka Peter Welbeck) and the American Playboy Channel. Unlike, some of their other collaborations (like "Christine") this is a historical period piece with literary pretensions (it's loosely based on a novel by Honore de Balzac) that resembles other "high-class" sex films of that era like "Fanny Hill" and "Nana". It's not nearly as interesting as a lot of earlier Eurotica like the "Black Emmanuelle" films or the films that Towers had made years earlier with Jesus Franco. It is more interesting though than most of the boring swill from the Playboy Channel of that time. The sex scenes are too long--especially considering they consist exclusively of very softcore breast suckling and ass fondling. And even when the movie delves into questionable scenes, like the teenage mistress getting gang-raped, it never leaves the rather boring realm of harmless fantasy and "good taste"(none of the "rapists" actually takes off his pantaloons, for instance). But it obviously has more of a plot than usual and it IS relatively classy.
Jacqueline Jones was an African-American actress who was never really seen again after this. She has a great body and is not a bad actress generally, but her decidedly "Foxy Brown" accent is a little anachronistic for the historical period when this story supposed takes place. Mandy Rice-Davies was infamous in real life for the early 60's "Profumo Affair" sex scandal in Britain (Bridget Fonda played her in the movie "Scandal"). Karin Schubert was a long-time Eurotica actress who was a little past her prime here, but interestingly was about to dive head-first into hardcore porn. And if I could say a few words about Florence Guerin: Pant! Drool! Slobber! That covers it pretty well. She would go on to do about as well as a young French actress could do in the once-great but collapsing Euro-exploitation industry of the 80's. This is alright I guess.
