Felicity

Can that be considered a pun? If so that I would ask you to ... forgive me. As you may be able to forgive Felicity ... actually she doesn't need your forgiveness at all. She may need my puns ... nah she does not need those either. What she does need is ... well I think you know where this is going ... and who is coming? Yes another pun arrived.

One can say that this seems more than inspired by Emmanuelle. And while it is not direct copy it does have a lot of things you will recognize (like the chair and of course loads of nudity and sexual situations). I reckon the first "real" encounter, is not really pleasing for Felicity ... but she her curiosity has been awakened by that point. And there is no stopping now ... as a song would suggest.

The movie does have cliches in it and it is predictable. But it also is really well played. And while the exploitation tag may be deserved to a degree, there is more here than meets the eye (or any other body part for that matter, excuse the pun).

It does miss opportunities though. Like when she and a lover come out of the elevator and are asked "goind down", they could have said, "we just did" ... instead we get a corny "what a lovely couple" a few seconds later from the woman getting on the elevator (alone).

I watched the uncut version, apparently there was a version that was cut a bit. Funnily enough in its home country of Australia ... it had most of the issues there. Something that is being discussed in extreme length in deleted scenes from the great documentary "Not Quite Hollywood" - included on the disc version of this. Don't be easily offende ... and you'll enjoy what you are being served.

Although it's rarely acknowledged, there are probably few films in history that were as influential as the 1974 softcore French classic "Emmanuelle". Besides the truly countless number of films with the word "Emmanuelle" (or the less legally-actionable variation "Emanuelle") in the title, there were any number of others that borrowed the basic plot of a young woman traveling to the Orient and/or having a sexual awakening. There was, for instance, the German film "Vanessa" with Olivia Pascal, the British film "Emily" with Koo Stark, the French-Italian films "Laure" and "End of Innocence" both with Annie Bell. And there was this Australian film with English actress Glory Annen.

Like "Vanessa", "End of Innocence", and a few others this features a slightly younger female character than the original "Emmanuelle", which allows it to start out in a girls' boarding school with a lot of hot showers and hot lesbian action. But the virginal "Felicity" (Annen) eventually finds her way to Hong Kong. She stays at first with a friend and her lover,and loses her virginity to an Aussie with a walrus moustache after one of her hosts' parties. After that "Felicity" meets a local,"Me Ling" (Joni Flynn),and embarks on an erotic tour of Hong Kong, having more anonymous sex on a Chinese junk. She then falls in love with another, nicer Aussie guy, but his job and the couple's mutual infidelities threaten to derail the relationship.

On the plus side, this movie has very good productions values and the girls--Annen,Flynn, etc.--are all very attractive. The movie pretty shamelessly steals from the "Emmanuelle" series in several places--it borrows the massage parlor scene from "Emmanuelle 2" and the improbable sex on a commercial airplane scene from the original "Emmanuelle". It's also more literary than your usual sex film, referencing not only the original novel "Emmanuelle", but other erotic classics of the 70's like "Histoire de O" and "Fear of Flying" (all of which "Felicity" is reading at some point). "Felicity" is generally odd character. She starts out as the world's horniest female virgin (witness her reading list), and remains a contradiction to the end, complaining about the hedonism of a Hong Kong bar they visit one minute, then having "zipless" sex with the bartender in the back room the next. But that's the 70's for you I guess. The love story is a little annoying and the theme song will stay in your head like a bad flu virus. All in all though, this is a pretty OK Aussie knock-off of "Emmanuelle".

I first saw this film back in the eighties and I still consider it to be the most erotic film ever made. Filmed on location, production values are high. Our eponymous heroine travels from her convent school, filmed at the artists' community at Montsalvat, Eltham, then Healesville train station, Victoria, in Australia to stay with her aunt in Hong Kong. There she meets the people who awaken her latent sexuality. All the female actors are incredibly gorgeous in a natural girl-next-door sort of way, especially Glory Annen who plays the lead. She spends a fair amount of time bathing and showering so the director certainly knew his job. Felicity offers a refreshing naturalness compared to the pumped up plasticity of modern erotica. Thoroughly recommended - naturally.

I wonder if the reviewers who raved about how they loved it when they were 13 years old, have seen this one in the last 25 years. Being addicted to late 70's/80's soft-core of the "Emmanuelle" variety, i had to hunt this one down. "Felicity" is nothing more than another wanna-be "Emmanuelle," but lacks the European style of those Italian and French cult films. The lead actress, played by Glory Annen is an absolute bore compared to Euro goddesses Laura Gemser and Sylvia Kristel. She is more of the plain, girl next door type, but perhaps this is deliberate? Penthouse bimbo Joni Flynn is a bit sexier, with a more exotic and Asian look, but gave the most hysterically bad acting performance i have ever witnessed. A sexy woman, maybe, but too cheap-looking, and dizzy to be taken seriously as Felicity's "sexual counselor." The men fare no better here. Felicity's love interest is an Aussie dude who is wearing more mascara than his female companion, and the actor is a little too old to play the part he is playing. And the guy who takes her virginity is a typical, oily creep of an older man. The worst thing of all, is the film seems somewhat racist; A white girl from Australia, travels to exotic Hong Kong, to have sexual encounters... with white people! What's wrong with Asians? She should have just stayed in Australia. What could have been a fascinating study of a young Western girl discovering the erotic mysteries of the Orient, turns out to be boring, typical exploitation, a film that is too timid to take any risks. But nothing is more miserable than the soundtrack, particularly the main theme, which is played over, and over, and over again; "She ain't Mama's little girl no more.." The only plus to this film is the beautiful Hong Kong scenery, which is the best thing this has to offer. Also, technically speaking, "Felicity" is a well-made film, and does feature some good erotic scenes. A missed opportunity, this could have been a classic in more competent hands.

If Merchant Ivory had set out to make a Russ Meyer's style film, this would be the result. The movie manages to walk a tightrope between it's brainless-ness, it's soft core porn, it's paper thin "plot" and somehow through it all doesn't come off as exactly sleazy. Calling it "sensual" feels wrong and somehow lends it more credibility than it probably deserves but all the same it's not exactly crass either. A weird little balancing act that pays off by being, if not great, than something better than the filmmaker's intended. Not good, not bad, just is.