Bacchanales Sexuelles
(Tout le monde il en a deux, 1973)

Jean Rollin

France

106 min, color, French (English subtitles)

Review © 2005 Branislav L. Slantchev

Total, unimaginable, irredeemable trash. There's a reason Rollin put his alter-ego Michel Gentil for the director's credit, and this reason is that this film is so embarrassing, one wonders just who pays for such schlock and why. I fast-forwarded through many sections of this crap, mostly the sex scenes, and in the end I must have watched a total of 30 minutes without getting button happy on the remote. I wonder why Synapse put the above title on the DVD when the film presents itself with the alternative Fly Me The French Way, which is just as incomprehensible, albeit more lurid.

Boozing & breast-groping: hallmarks of true art	Typical "acting" to advance the "plot"

This is a soft-core porno to which many reviewers have striven mightily to lend some degree of respectability. They have even summarized what passes for a plot in an attempt to endow the film with meaning that it brusquely brushes aside in its pursuit of... well, I am not quite sure what but entertainment it is not. Before I continue, let me make one thing clear: I do not object to porn. But I want it to be well made. I also do not want it to pretend it's something else. I also have my own preferences when it comes to the type of stuff I do and do not like in such films, and this one is offensive in just about every way that I can think of and it takes a lot to offend me, trust me on that one.

The supposedly liberated Malvina	The torture chamber and degradation

The film is nothing but an excuse for the delicious Joëlle Coeur (who would play a much more restrained role in the same year's Demoniacs) to romp around naked and satisfy her somewhat constant sexual craving with everyone and everything that comes handy. Now, she's stunning to look at, no bones about it, and she's has a face that is so expressive, she hardly needs any dialogue, which is just as well since she can't deliver any line that does not involve her implicitly licking her lips. She spends almost her entire screen time either naked or in the process of getting naked. Okay, this is not too bad, you think, but you are wrong. It's awful.

Marmalade seems to be past expiration date	Random firearm violence against mannequins

One reason is the totally anti-erotic way that Rollin has shot the film. I mean, there's a sexual act every five minutes or so, and not even one of them is arousing. They are either frankly boring or else extremely embarrassing. So as an appeal to my prurient interest, this film was as flat and attractive as a Kansas corn field. (I guess that makes it non-pornographic by the legal definition in the U.S., hehehehe.) The other reason is from a personal preference: I just don't dig the "au naturel" pre-Gillette look that almost all women sport here. And sticking the camera in excruciating closeups to various deeply forested areas is just plain repulsive. There, I said it. These are the scenes I skipped en masse.

Could be an ad for NOW	Gratuitous shot of Joëlle Coeur

Another off-putting aspect of the film is its unabashed misogyny. Although women are ostensibly in dominant roles, the depiction represents such a flash back to pre-feminist dark ages that one almost expects men to take to wearing robes. Oh wait, they sometimes do! Take Valerie (Joëlle's character), for example. On the surface, she's a liberated woman who swings all ways, loves threesomes with total strangers, and would think nothing of fucking a random schmuck whose name she does not even know. But she also consents to rape, mostly noxiously succumbing to her assailant's "charms" and then not only becoming aroused but also quite enthusiastically fucking his brains out (which does not take too long on account of him having not a lot of brains to fuck out). She even manages to affect jealousy when the same guy mentions another woman the next morning. Valerie's reaction is to smear Marmalade over her breasts and tummy to force him to forget everyone but her. Not just offensive but puerile.

Shock at maid's skirt revealing too much...	...soon corrected in happy bath threesome

Or take Valerie's friend Sophie (Marie-France Morel) who is kidnapped in a case of mistaken identity by the Castel twins in service of Malvina (Brigitte De Borghese). Sophie is taken to Malvina's house and tortured (stripped, chained, and whipped), then raped. OK, the typical female victim you think. But wait, look at Malvina, the ostensible mistress of the house. She runs a sex ring based on extortion: she apparently has compromising pictures of its various members, and she uses them to blackmail these people into performing all sort of degrading (but fun) sexual antics for her amusement.

Valerie and random fuck-buddy	They don't teach that in maid school

She has ordered Valerie's kidnapping because she wants to find out who Valerie's cousin is, the man having stolen these pictures and therefore threatened her dominion. It's just the Castel twins inadvertently kidnap the totally innocent Sophie instead. (Which, it must be said, does not really cause much concern to Valerie who happily fucks Sophie's friend---nameless schmuck of previous paragraph---and then proceeds to fuck him again, then the maid, then him and the maid, all in a morning's time before setting out to find where her missing friend is.) Anyway, Malvina is quite pathetic despite her apparent strength. She has a girl lick her toes but still seeks satisfaction in a man, Paul (Jean-Paul Hazy). The guy, however, has some hangups and can't perform with her, causing her to fly into rage and order that he rape Sophie instead, which he does quite ably.

Captive Sophie staying resolutely nude in close proximity to clothes	The Castel twins in embarrassing cameo

In the end it is revealed that Paul is Valerie's cousin and when the pictures are destroyed, he shoots some of Malvina's minions and then asks to be left alone with his former tormentor. Naturally, he proceeds to fuck her and (surprise, surprise) she climaxes in seconds after he explains that he used to find her unattractive but now that she's been totally subjugated to him, he finds her desirable. In other words, only a fully humiliated and helpless woman can get his penis up. What's even worse, said woman suddenly finds herself completely aroused by the guy who she had scorned just hours ago on account of his impotence. The message is clear: a man not in position of authority over the woman is not a man---he cannot get an erection unless she is submissive, and she cannot get aroused unless he has power over her. Although one would not normally look at a porn flick to find respectful treatment of women, this blatant misogyny is so off-putting, it eclipses everything else, and would have doomed the film even if the other stuff was erotic, which it wasn't.

Cut you or fuck you, can't decide	Let's get the hell out of this film!

The DVD from Synapse is a throw-away, a perfect medium for this flick. The picture is widescreen at 1.66:1 and anamorphically enhanced, but do not let that fool you. The horrible film stock is in evidence everywhere, and all too often detail is lost in smeared visuals that could have been corrected if the studio had bothered to improve the picture. But why should they have, anyway? The colors are washed out, the video is grainy, and the entire film has the look of a 1970s cheap porno, which it aspires to be. The French soundtrack is also exactly what you would expect from such a production, down to the cheesy jazz looping during the sex scenes. The disc comes with removable English subs but you don't need to read them to understand how bad it is. Avoid, avoid at all costs.

December 8, 2005