Legendary French producer Pierre Braunberger, with over half a century of savvy funding decisions behind him (enabling the creative efforts of fine filmmakers such as Renoir, Truffaut and Lelouch), came out of the closet as a dirty old man pardon moi, an "erotic connoisseur" ! when he embarked upon this folly. He had dabbled in simulated sex cinema before, putting up the means for Guy Casaril's EMMANUELLE wannabe EMILIENNE and Gérard Pirès' porn satire ATTENTION LES YEUX!, but this was an altogether different beast. A trilogy of short subjects supplied by some of the world's most renowned carnal creators, it was possibly intended as the first installment of an ongoing series, a plan sadly sabotaged by lukewarm critical and audience reception. Three decades down the line, the movie's main quality consists of the sheer diversity in idiosyncratic styles on display, both in form and content.
Eschewing the literary roots of his greatest hits, EMMANUELLE and HISTOIRE D'O, Just Jaeckin kicks off with The Isle of Sirens, from an original script by Jean-Michel Ribes who penned Jacques Baratier's risqué VOUS INTERESSEZ-VOUS A LA CHOSE? prior to acquiring stature as a proficient perpetrator of star-studded French farces like LA GALETTE DU ROI and the recent MUSEE HAUT, MUSEE BAS. Something of a single joke concept finds sailor Benoît Croissant (the late Roland Blanche, a familiar supporting actor often cast as police detectives, as in Luc Besson's NIKITA) washed up on the shore of a deserted tropical island following his ship being wrecked in a storm. When he runs into friendly native Laura Gemser (BLACK EMANUELLE herself), he no longer wants to go home. But the girl and her three equally lovely sisters have a nasty surprise in store for him. For the record, the other actresses are stunning Marpessa Djian (memorable in Michel Drach's fierce diatribe against capital punishment LE PULL-OVER ROUGE), Cathérine Gandois (from Claire Clouzot's L'HOMME FRAGILE) and Hedwige Thabuis, one of many topless beauties in Christopher Frank's unsettling L'ANNEE DES MEDUSES. Gauzily shot by the director's regular DoP Robert Fraisse (who subsequently worked on Jean-Jacques Annaud's not as dissimilar as it pretended to be L'AMANT) and scored with dreamlike lilting electronic lullabies by pop prince Pierre Bachelet, this makes for a pleasing enough appetizer.
Japanese Shuji Terayama would pass away from a terminal illness a mere four years later, not even reaching the age of 50, and remains a key figure in world cinema, not least because of his ongoing censorship battles, most famously with his 1971 EMPEROR TOMATO KETCHUP, evoking a world run by children whose proclivity for both sexual and violent excess he unflinchingly detailed. Grass Labyrinth is based on a novel by Kyoka Izumi, an impenetrable author if additional film versions including Seijun Suzuki's indescribable HEAT SHIMMER THEATER are any indication. Akira, played as a boy by Hiroshi Mikami and as an adult by Takeshi Wakamatsu (ironically, the stars of prolific J-horror provider Norio Tsuruta's PREMONITION and RING 0 respectively), wanders around his native village searching for the words to a children's rhyme about the birthday gifts bestowed upon a possibly deceased girl named Oharu. Narrative coherence flies out the window almost immediately as Terayama hints at Akira's incestuous affair with his perversely protective mother (played by the director's muse Keiko Niitaka, the proud prostitute from his THROW AWAY YOUR BOOKS, RALLY IN THE STREETS) while filling the screen with breathtaking imagery, at least some of which appears to have inspired Peter Greenaway's THE PILLOW BOOK. Multiple viewings gradually reveal method to its maker's madness, such as his consequent use of symbolism with colorful balls signifying both childhood and fertility for instance. Terayama's theatrical troupe Tenjo Sajiki (Peanut Gallery) appears sporadically as some sort of Greek chorus and future filmmaker Juzo Itami of TAMPOPO and TAXING WOMAN fame, who tragically took his own life in 1997, plays all additional male parts. Whether this episode shapes up as either magnificent or maddening, viewers will have to decide for themselves.
Polish-born animator turned fleshy fetishist Walerian Borowczyk who died from heart failure in 2006 closes the gates with his adaptation of a Guy de Maupassant short story called The Closet. Set in turn of the century Paris, it tells of a melancholic young man (played by Yves-Marie Maurin, brother of tragic French cinema legend Patrick Dewaere) seeking solace from solitude in the arms of beautiful Marie-Catherine Conti (from Patrick Schulmann's popular ET LA TENDRESSE? BORDEL!) as a chorus girl at a rundown cabaret. Attempting to secure her companionship for the whole night rather than the customary half hour poses unexpected complications however. Its literary pedigree notwithstanding, this provides a mere anecdote instead of plot, salvaged by the director's customary obsession with body parts and inanimate objects, frequently framed in extreme close-up by his regular camera man Noël Véry. In its own way, as perfect an encapsulation of its maker's extremely personal universe as was the film within a film ("Love Express") in his otherwise badly botched EMMANUELLE V. Ah, there's just no escaping the old girl, is there ?
