Black
Angel (2002/aka Senso
'45/Cult Epics
DVD)/Cheeky
(2000/aka Monella)/Frivolous
Lola (1998/Arrow Region B
Import Blu-rays)/Linda
Lovelace's Loose Lips: The Last Interview
(2014/MVD Visual DVD)/Successive
Slidings Of Pleasure
(1974/Kino/Redemption Blu-ray)
Picture:
C+/B/B/C/B Sound: C+/B-/B-/C+/B- Extras: C+/C/C/D/C+
Films: B-/B-/B-/C+/C+
PLEASE
NOTE:
The Cheeky
and Frivolous
Lola
Import Region B Blu-rays only work on machines that can handle that
version of the format, are only available our friends at Arrow Video
in the U.K. and can be ordered from the link below.
Here
is a rare cycle of upscale erotic titles, starting with three by
Tinto Brass, one on an icon of the XXX industry and an artsy take on
the subject by a French New Wave writer/director...
Brass'
Black
Angel
(2002/aka Senso
'45)
retells the Senso
story in a very sexually overt WWII circumstance and does not
compromise on the politics or ruthlessness of the Nazis (see our
coverage of the 1954 Visconti Senso
on Criterion Blu-ray elsewhere on this site) with older, married
Livia (Anna Galiena) instantly attracted to outrageous, ambitious and
powerful-at-a-young-age Nazi lieutenant (Gabriel Garko) along with
being bored with her husband, who is still a good man with her best
interests in mind.
Instead
of just the erotic, Brass is more starkly honest about the politics
of power, fascism and madness in the final months of the Axis Powers
and the Nazis. Running a healthy 124 minutes, the film never bores,
is as good as any release here and is worth going out of your way
for. It also has a fine score by the legendary Ennio Morricone.
On
Blu-ray from the U.K. and the second time we are covering them in
import editions, Brass' Frivolous
Lola
(1998/aka
Monella)
and Cheeky
(2000/aka Monella)
are being issued in nicely upgraded and expanded editions by Arrow
U.K. That makes them more involving. To repeat our synopses before,
Monella
(1998/aka
Frivolous
Lola)
has Lola (Anna Ammirati) and her fiancée/baker Masetto (Mario
Parodi) dealing with the oppression of 1950s Italy, but while he
wants to wait until they get married to have sex, she is not waiting
and finds other men, including her mother’s new lover André
(Patrick Mower of the British spy series Callan).
While Transgressions
(2000) is easily the best of the films here, with the very sexy Carla
(Yuliya Mayarchuk) trying to find an apartment in London for her
boyfriend, but finding all kinds of other men who are more interested
in her, plus a few women. Brass manages to bring his 1970s style
into the modern time without loosing any of its classical sense or
look, which is not easy to do: he throws away his usual pretenses.
All
three Brass films show us he is a better director than Caligula
(a compromised work, reviewed on Blu-ray elsewhere on this site)
hardly epitomizes what he is capable of and Angel
is as good a film as any I have seen of his to date. It is also nice
to see a filmmaker who takes the erotic seriously at a time when it
has become too much a joke these days. I recommend all three.
All
three offer Original Theatrical Trailers, new English subtitles for
the Italian dialogue and the Blu-rays add booklets with essays &
illustrations, while Angel
adds a promo, Making Of featurette, Photo Video Gallery and separate
section for the entire Original Soundtrack.
More
of a compilation release than a comprehensive work, Linda
Lovelace's Loose Lips: The Last Interview
(2014) takes footage from what was the XXX star's last interview and
cuts in all kinds of other footage to talk about the lady and her
legacy. The core interview was conducted by Legs McNeil, but if the
dramatic Lovelace
film (reviewed elsewhere on this site) had a lack of exposition, this
gets into tacky territory when some of the interviewees start calling
Lovelace a liar and criticize her life; a cheap thing to do since she
is no longer with us to defend herself. The result is exploitive,
slanted and a little misogynistic, but there is enough here to
justify seeing this one once.
There
are no extras either (no surprise), but you can see more about Linda
in action in a censored version of Deep
Throat
and the amusing Linda
Lovelace For President,
go to this link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/7521/Deep+Throat+(1972/Umbrella+Entertainment/PAL
Finally
we have Alain Robbe-Grillet's Successive
Slidings Of Pleasure
(1974) with Jean-Louis Trintignant, Isabelle Huppert and Michel
Lonsdale in a mystery of sorts about a young woman (Anicee Alvina)
who may or may not have stabbed her roommate Olga Georges-Picot) to
death, but instead of a mystery film, we get surreal, visually
ultra-constructed scenes that examine the character of the people
involved as well as their sexual desires all the way to the plastique
side of fetishes. If this were any colder, this would be totally
unerotic, but Robbe-Grillet
delivers an ambitious-but-mixed-bag of ideas, images and
unfortunately, one too many obvious and predictable moments and even
twists. Till, this is the film he was making and it succeeds unto
itself, if not overall. It is at least interesting enough
(especially with some of its cast) that it too is worth a look.
Extras
include trailers for other Robbe-Grillet films, a promo for the
Blu-rays our & on the way and a 33 minutes on-camera interview
with Robbe-Grillet on this film and more.
The
three 1080p digital High Definition Blu-rays here look good for their
age including the 1.78 X 1 Brass titles outperforming the import PAL
DVD versions of their respective films and the 1.66 X 1 color image
on Pleasure
is the oldest of the three and Kino has done a fine job with a
transfer from the original 35mm camera elements, so this is good news
all around here.
The anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image on Angel
also comes from a fine print and made me wish for a Blu-ray version,
but this very well-shot film could not look better in the format.
Unfortunately, the same presentation on Linda
is a mix of rough old film and old video footage with newer footage
having more motion blur, staircasing, aliasing and other flaws that
hold back performance overall.
As
for sound, all three Blu-rays offer PCM 2.0 sound in their native
languages (2.0 Italian Stereo for the Brass
films, 2.0 mono for Pleasure)
and pretty much sound as good as they ever are going to. Angel
has lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 and 2.0 Stereo options with the 5.1
slightly edging out the other, but would likely shine further in a
lossless presentation. Linda
is about its equal with lossy
Dolby Digital 2.0 sound that is stereo at best.
You
can order the Cheeky
and Frivolous
Lola
Import Region B Blu-rays among other great exclusives from Arrow U.K.
at this link:
http://www.arrowfilms.co.uk/
-
Nicholas Sheffo
