Sometimes you wonder how a film gets approved for financing. With this one, you could pitch it by saying, Let's put "Story of O" in the title and lots of people will watch it. Doesn't matter what the film is about. You could say, Let's tell a story about the downfall of a prideful man, sort of a morality play, and lots of people would watch it. Or you could say what you meant to say all along, Let's make a movie overflowing with naked women that has a story line we'll think of later to make it all hang together, and lots of people will watch it. Now we're talking.
This film is not in any way an adaptation of Return to the Château, Pauline Reage's sequel to her famous novel. It does borrow the title character, O, played by the stunning Sandra Wey. O is an instrument of destruction here, hired by a group of businessmen to ruin the life of a rival who is attempting a takeover. The weapon she uses is sex. O takes Carole James, playing the businessman's daughter, to the château to have her initiated into O-dom in a way quite reminiscent of O's. That means we get to see the fully-equipped James naked a lot, and that's a good thing. O then hires out the seduction of the businessman's wife and his son, who bats from the other side of the plate, and let's not leave out the guard dog. No kidding. The dog. When she has compromised everyone in the family, O turns the family onto each other to complete the ruination of her victim. Roll credits.
This movie is filmed in a European style, which means sexuality is handled much differently than an American film company would do it. It's softcore, but the simulated sex scenes have a hardcore feel. Like I mentioned before, there are naked women everywhere doing European things. The actors move the story along well enough, no one chews up the scenery, though there are a few ridiculous Western accents in the dubbed soundtrack. This is a decent sex film that has a story easy to ignore while you wait for the good parts, which fortunately come by fairly often. Recommended.
