Das lüsterne Quartet

It's a pretty adventurous movie, poised rather uneasily between constant arty inventiveness and a distinctly stilted coating of baroque overemphasis that, of course, makes due space for the porno calculations. From the very first scene of the family watching the dirty movies, heard initially as disembodied heads in darkness, there's an obvious hankering after seriousness, and the astonishment is that this ambition never becomes utterly foolish. It's quite a provocative film, and would likely not seem so dated with warmer, more nuanced actors, a less obviously titillating style, and without the unfortunate montages of running through the fields and suchlike to the accompaniment of gooey sixties music. There's ultimately no real revelation though, despite the constant return to doubling and echoing and evocation of the odd relationship between art and life, but it gives the feeling of having been intuitively (more than intellectually) shaped and prodded into something quite coherent. The highly designed library sex scene hardly fits but is memorable in its own right.

I didn't enjoy this quite as much as I did a few years back and this may be because I found the pacing a little difficult this time. Nevertheless it is still a fabulous looking, brave, intriguing and beguiling movie. I don't know where the title comes from and I don't know why the daredevil motorcycle sequence, early on, was so long but the central idea with the supposed projection of an old stag movie that is not all it seems is a great notion. The castle setting (Balsorano, Italy) is amazing and the Stelvio Cipriani score one of his very best, so lush and stirring, particularly effective in the 'very sixties' running jumping and having sex outdoors sequence and the superb pop art library sex sequence. I must mention the solid Frank Wolff, who would drown himself in a Hilton bath tub shortly after this film and the amazing, Silvana Venturelli, who would do little else after this than some playboy layouts. Not for everyone but if the names Vadim, Robbe- Grillet and Warhol don't scare you off, you'll probably get something out of this unique film.

Opening with a quote by Luigi Pirandello regarding the elusive and illusory nature of reality, Radley Metzger's 1970 soft-core, art-house offering, "The Lickerish Quartet," is indeed one mind-twisting film. In it, a stepfather, wife and son watch a stag film one night in their sumptuous castle, and later go to a carnival and see a motorcycle stunt performance. They bring home the beautiful blond cycler, who bears an uncanny resemblance to one of the hotties in that stag film, and she proceeds to seduce all three in turn. The end. But wait a minute...why is that stag film subtly altered now, and why do the family and the hotty start emulating the action IN that film? Apparently, Metzger & Co. have some comments they'd like to make regarding art imitating life, or life imitating art, or the mutability of reality, or how film alters our perception of truth, or how time plays tricks on memory. After two viewings, I'm still trying to figure the darn thing out. But the picture does provide other pleasures, besides its baffling themes. The four principals are all quite good, especially the gorgeous Silvana Venturelli as the blond (or is it brunette?) temptress. The location of the film, the Piccolomini Castle in Balsorano, Italy (also the location, BTW, of the 1965 Italian horror film "The Bloody Pit of Horror"), is equally gorgeous, and Enrico Sabbatini's set decor of the castle's chambers (especially that library!) is also a feast for the eyes. Perhaps best of all, Stephen Cipriani has provided a Morricone-like score for the film that is exceptionally beautiful, and certainly deserving of a soundtrack CD. This score is especially lovely when used as a backdrop for Silvana's prancing through a sunlit field. Still, "The Lickerish Quartet" remains a trippy head-scratcher, at best. Lines such as "Isn't everyone in movies?" and "Reality's hard" might clue in potential viewers to prepare themselves for one brow-furrowing evening....

This was one of the films that brought Radley Metzger to the forefront of mainstream erotic films. The narrative is interesting and full of tricks. It uses flashbacks, pseudoflashbacks and multiple perspectives. Yes, it's a bit pretentious, but the plot keeps you watching. And how about that library scene? I laughed aloud when I saw it, being comfortably ensconsed in an apartment full of many books I haven't read either. Maybe what I need is a mistress to sweep everything away like that!!

Metzger's porno-existentialist film (or something like that)deals with a family of three, living in a spacious castle, whose comfortable lifestyle is upset by the arrival of a mysterious woman who may or may not be an actress in one of the stag films the husband likes to watch. A woman who may or may not even be real.... But what IS real, anyway...?

Sounds fun, right? Not really. I had the opportunity to see this in a theatre last year (1998). There was nothing but dead silence from the audience all the way through.

Yes, the film is interesting, as all really weird flicks tend to be, but it's also almost unbearably irritating. The acting is clumsy, and the director's painfully obvious desire to make Art (instead of just plain "art") weighs down the whole production. And, good golly, that dialogue: "Your virility is just as illusory as her virginity!"

There's some cool visuals, though. Especially the weird scene in the library wherein the male and female leads make out on the floor, which for some reason is covered with dictionary entries of sexual terms set in large bold type.

Don't you miss the '70s?