Intrigo d'amore

One of the biggest difference between European and North American audiences is how they react to sex in the movies. So many hypocritical Americans (and Canadians for that matter) are uptight about carnal subject matter in what's essentially the cinematic equivalent of candy. Have some once in a while, but don't base your whole diet on the stuff!

"Basic Instinct" became a global smash in 1992 due to some not very realistic sex scenes. That flick was a big budget version of the silly made for cable films full of naked women in distress, hoping to find some decent Alpha male to protect and hopefully get it on with them. How "BI" was seen as any more than a dumb, enjoyable (if you like that kind of thing!) sex film for adults is beyond me (and homophobic?..."Bird On A Wire" was much more homophobic than "BI"!). It's dabbling in (female) bisexuality is more than a lot of Westerners can handle and it was a hot topic for much longer than it should have been.

"Intrigo D'Amore", known by other titles ("Intrigues Sensuelles" in France and Quebec, where I've seen the French dubbed version on regular network television late at night), is a good example of a freer spirited Italian sexploitation picture. The younger Milly D'Abbraccio makes quite an impression from the start of this, as a woman who's definitely not having great sex with her husband early on in the story. Comparing this dark haired, earthy beauty being somewhat demure (in this apparently soft core effort) with the wild woman (either blonde or red haired in later hard core movies) who takes on all comers as a prototypical MILF of the 1990s and later Italian market, is a radical contrast.

Her "Janet" visits a not so ethical photographer, who's in cahoots with a female accomplice to get more than simple snapshots of glamour scenarios for women to entice their spouses. What happens afterwards is more than a little predictable, but that's part of the charm of Euro soft core. Our friends across the pond don't see sex as evil, whereas the emphasis in much American horror and porn (almost all genres, but especially those two!) is on ridiculing, if not humiliating, lots of people who are just dull and "normal" in their desires.

They used to show quite a few European flicks on non cable stations in Quebec, but gradually moved more towards the aforementioned US cable junk and eventually, American hard core with all the real sex cut out! That's about as interesting as the Texas hold em poker program that has taken over the late night Saturday slot those steamy, if silly Euro flicks used to have a home in (how many of those f$$king "Emmanuelle" movies were there anyway?). Cannes changed it's content rules years ago to keep out increasing numbers of sex films and what did that really accomplish? Sex in movies is here to stay.

Milly was in the news while running for public office a while back. If Ilona Staller can get elected, why not Ms. D? If not politics, she should always have a home in soft core, provided she could tolerate "simulated" activity long enough to make an appearance on something like "Nip/Tuck" or a "Grindhouse" style flick, which her million watt smile would be perfect for (I'd love to hear her rapid fire sexy voice in Italiano and see the English subtitles struggle to keep up!). Just some ideas.

Everything about this movie is lower tier. The actresses are of merely average attractiveness. The script is absolutely stupid. For some reason all of the characters are named Bob and Frank and Janet despite being an Italian film featuring Italian actors.

An example of the poor script can be seen in the very first scene: Bob is in the shower and starts berating his wife "Janet" for being in front of the mirror when he needs to brush his teeth. Bob keeps showering and Janet looks at herself in the mirror followed by implied masturbation (she is only shown from the neck up). At no point does Bob leave the shower and brush his teeth and the couple are not even on screen at the same time.

The sex scenes and nudity are mildly titillating at best and are not particularly well lit or shot. I've got nothing at all against erotica and sexploitation but this just doesn't deliver much of anything on any level. Not worth the time it takes to watch.

If you ever wondered what happened to the old Italian giallo genre from the 1970's (aside from Dario Argento doing a periodic, relatively big-budget revival film like "Sleepless" now and then), well, they basically kind of merged with the much less interesting "erotic thriller" genre. I'm not sure who was really more responsible for the "erotic thrillers", the Americans or the Italians. The American ones were probably inspired by "Basic Instinct", "9 and 1/2 Weeks" and (going back a little) "Body Heat", but the Italians developed their own parallel strain of these films that were basically just very sexed-up and plot-deficient gialli. There was stuff like "Fatal Temptation", "Arabella, the Black Angel", and "Taste of Fear". And there is this one.

This is about a wealthy, married woman (Milly D'Abraccio) who goes to a sleazy erotic photographer as gift for her husband (I think). The handsome photographer seduces her, and he has a female accomplice who snaps additional photos for the purposes of blackmail. Nevertheless, she recommends the guy to another much less happily married friend (Valentine Demy),and the friend much more enthusiastically goes to bed with him too. It all ends in a pretty bathetic fashion. As you might have noticed, there is a lack of the kind of palate-cleansing violence that always made the earlier gialli kind of entertaining, no matter how ridiculously sex-soaked some of them were. The gialli often had a lot of sex in them, but this movie and other later "erotic thrillers" are pretty much NOTHING BUT sex. They also pale compared to the earlier gialli when it comes to plot--the gialli had intricate, and convoluted (if often quite absurd)plots while these films have very basic to the point of virtually non-existent plots--and when it comes to film style--the gialli were often wild stylized with great musical scores while these are just so much soft-focus "porn gloss" with vomit-inducing late 80's/early 90's canned "romantic" music.

Milly D'Abraccio and Valentine Demy both have incredible bodies (although I suspect the body of future hardcore star Demy is not entirely real). There's probably sufficient material here to inspire lone mail viewers to "fire one off" as it were, but afterward even they will have a hard time sitting through the rest of this movie. Although he used a pseudonym in the print I saw, I wasn't at all surprised to find out this was directed by perennial Italian hack Maurizio Garazziano. He was trying to do in the giallo with ridiculous amounts of softcore porn way back in the late 70's with "Play Motel". But at least that very wrong-headed film had some memorable WTF moments. This one is just plain boring I'm afraid.