Exponerad

Exposed (1971)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Christina Lindberg fans can rejoice because another one of her films has been released to DVD. In this film she plays a 17-year-old girl who gets taken advantage of by an older man. He took some nude photos of her and is now blackmailing her, which doesn't sit well with a mama's boy that she's currently dating. There are about two other plot lines that could be brought up but, as the director states in the featurette, the story really isn't that important when you've got the beautiful Lindberg running around nude for 60% of the running time. The movie actually manages to be more than just your typical sexploitation film because the story itself isn't too bad and we get some decent performances. The entire subplot of Lindberg's character imagining bad things happening to her might have been a homage to Bunuel's BELLE DE JOUR but it works. These fantasy sequences range from her being raped, to her death with some nudist and various others. Lindberg turns in a good, if certainly not great performance, which is more than enough. She certainly makes us care for her character even though we really don't learn too much about her. The biggest issue with this film and many other sexploitation movies is that there's just not enough going on for a running time over seventy-five minutes. Clocking in at 91-minutes this film runs out of steam towards the final half-hour and there's just way too much added stuff. There's a five-minute sequence, which shows us the movie TARZAN TRIUMPHS but it's not just a clip but an entire five-minute sequence! The print has the Swedish subtitles as well, which was strange to see and I'm curious if Warner knows about it. There are other sequences that could have used some editing as well. With that said, most people are coming to this film to see Lindberg and you get plenty to look out, which is good enough for the film to work.

A run-of-the-mill erotic fantasy film (that also owes much of it's narrative charms to Bunuel's classic Belle de Jour (1969)), is elevated by the elfin-like, nubile-innocent beauty of Swedish star Christina Lindberg. Her ethereal Lena, like Catherine Deneuve's Severine, displays an ambiguity in her sense of reality. We are never really sure if her sexual experiences throughout the film are fantasies or not. Lena drifts from Jan (Bjorn Adelly), a mummy's boy, and Helge (Heinz Hopf), a seeming playboy who offers her to friends who hangout at parties at his house.

The direction and cinematography are quite loose, giving it's mis-en- scene an elemental idea of realism. But with this technique, the result has very little suspense or atmosphere. Beginning with Lena taking off from boyfriend, Jan, hitchhiking out to a country house. She is picked up by a couple who go with her, and Lena imagines an encounter with the man of the couple. From here Lena simply goes back and forth between the two men who offer their utter love to her. She seems uninterested in either. We are reminded throughout the film that Helge took some nude photographs of her, and he attempts to blackmail her - something that never really happens, and some humanity suddenly comes from the sullen- seeming Lena, as she demands that she have them and the negatives.

Whilst the film has a reputation for it's depiction of sexuality, and now relatively soft sexual violence, it is rarely shocking. Also, with a very thin plot, it plods along in quite a pedestrian fashion. However, this is not to say that the time spent with this film is certainly no waste of time. Christina Lindberg is incredibly watchable. She radiates beauty, and has an incredible presence. So, with utter beguiled fascination, the film goes from being a two star reward, to a three.

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When I was a teenager I often hear about small magazine of Sweden nudes girl sold a black market at my home city, how I never had any money to buy it, my friend showed me his unique issue, now I see how it was made watching this unknown picture from there, where the director Gustav Wiklund laid a unusual narrative over a underage girl when their parents is absence by a seasoned vacation.

The attractive and naïve Lena (Christina Lindberg) has a boring life among studies, working as Museum assistant and has a young boyfriend Jan (Bjorn Adelly), in the meantime she meets those womanizer mature man Helge (Heinz Hopf) whom usually convinces his girls to spicy nude photo shoot, clearly Helge make part of underground of so profitable exploitation that sold this nude photos worldwide, the crock Helge has a sordid relationship with the ninny Lena, who runs away from him in a dangerous journey at road hitchhiking until reach a country house of his boyfriend Jan, who sudden appears there casting out Lena an odd couple of broad-mind Lena's hitch-hike from there.

Back at Stockholm Lena tries get back from Helge the photo's negatives at once due if it is caught in the black market will ruins her standing, meanwhile meets with Jan to fix the mistake, Helge delivers the negatives and also the pictures, nonetheless still pursued her for unknown reason, the outcome is too much disturbing offering.

It quite sure wasn't able to every taste whatsoever, in some early sequence the newbie Director Wiklund exposes several scenes whereof just decurrent Lena's thoughts as real, thereafter back to reality, somehow it displeased the audience for such misleading trick, a kind of sexploitation feature, laid down by Sweden standard, deserves respect.

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First watch: 2023 / How many: 1 / Source: DVD / Rating: 7.

17-year-old Lena (Christine Lindberg) is prone to flights of fancy, most of which involve her being sexually abused or killed. Torn between two lovers, boyfriend Jan and hedonistic pig Helge (who is blackmailing her with naked photos), Lena decides to run away, but after a few days on the road, during which she imagines herself raped, murdered and killed in a car crash, she returns home to confront her problems, all of which might only be inside her head anyway.

The subtitles for my copy of Exponerad lagged a couple of minutes behind the film, meaning that I found matters really hard to follow—not that I care that much, because the story was dreadfully dull from what I could gather and isn't what drew me to the film in the first place. No, I sought this one out for the same reason that I imagine most men do: the presence of beautiful exploitation sexpot Lindberg, who being a liberal-minded Swede in the early 70s, frequently disrobes and indulges in soft-core hanky-panky for the pleasure of the viewer.

Apart from the regular nudity from the star, there isn't much else to recommend about Exponerad: Lena's violent daydreams are fairly jarring I suppose, and certainly make the viewer wonder what the hell is going, as does a trip to the cinema in which we are treated to several minutes of a Johnny Weismuller Tarzan classic, but everything pales in comparison to the other Lindberg films I have seen so far (my other Lindberg viewings being revenge flick Thriller: A Cruel picture and pinku Journey To Japan).

Without Christina, this would probably only be a 3/10 tops; with her, It's got to be worth a 5.

This movie is an uneasy mix of carefree hedonistic sixties sexy fun and a darker, more edgy sexuality and is all the better for that. In a way the gorgeous Christina Lindberg also epitomises this duality, is she a wide eyed innocent schoolgirl or someone craving some action? Well, I suppose the fact she spends most of the film with hardly any clothes partly answers that question but here even she seems unable to decide. Indeed for much of the movie we slip fantasy and reality and between her safe home loving, sweater wearing boyfriend to the more exciting older guy who plays with drugs and SM. Always good to watch with some interesting twists and turns and a glorious semi consensual bondage scene to round things off.