The Amorous Sisters

This soft core film from Swiss filmmaker Erwin C. Dietrich, stars Brigitte Lahaie and Flore Sollier as Jenny and Juliet, the Amorous Sisters of the title. Set in a Swiss finishing school, the only teacher seems to be Miss Brown (Barbara Moose) with a class of seven girls and the only subject on the curriculum seems to be sex education lessons which the girls are more than willing to put into practise. The director has no qualms in showing both male and female full-frontal nudity, whilst lesbianism and self-pleasuring in the dormitory after lights-out is the norm in this school. Jenny's boyfriend is smuggled into the dormitory to give the girls an impromptu sex lesson. There is a surreal and fascinating sequence in which Miss Brown and her charges are running naked through he forest with butterfly nets, all shown in slow motion with a haunting music track. There is also a subplot in which Mike Montana plays a he-man character who has lost the ability to satisfy his wife in the bedroom but Jenny and Juliet devise a cunning and sexy plan to rectify the problem. If only all problems could be solved in this way.

The director has picked some picturesque Swiss locations for filming. The castle used as the school is Schloss Widen, (sometimes spelt Wyden) Ossingen, Canton Zurich. The city of Zurich is used for the night time rooftop panorama and also near the end of the film when Jenny and Juliet are walking through the old part of town, the twin towers of the Grossmunster Kirche can be seen in the background. The nature trek was filmed in the Canton of Ticino. The girls walking over the double-arched footbridge was filmed at Lavertezzo in Val Verzasca, but as yet the other villages used in the sequence remain a mystery. This film is an enjoyable romp from a time long gone and one may wonder if films like this could ever be made again.