Aphrodite - Im Wendekreis der Begierde

The makers of this movie wanted to make a story, late Victorian, set on a breathtakingly beautiful Greek island. But soon they realized that there was not much of a story, the actors were not good enough to spice up the dull characters. And then they remembered Caligula. It suffered from the same shortcomings, but became a best seller by the use of sex.

So sex was introduced in this movie, including a few orgy scenes. It is all soft core-on-the-edge. And that was the first mistake. It is the 80's. Nobody is shocked by naked people anymore. The second point is that all the sex doesn't really help the characters. In the beginning of the movie they don't mean anything to you, by the end of this movie you don't even care about them. The acting is partly reasonable, partly intolerable. The movie itself is smothered in pretenses.

On the positive side: a lot of attention is paid to the costumes and the settings. The actors are quite attractive. The camera work is excellent: the soft focus effect really adds to the weird atmosphere. It also works in one or two carefully filmed love scenes, filmed in a "Bilitis" David Hamilton style.

All in all this is a dreadfully boring movie, pretentious and not delivering on any level.

I rate this 3 out of 10.