Sensi caldi

Co-written, directed, photographed and edited by Arduino Sacco, this was his second movie in a long filmography mostly composed of hardcore pornography. According to the book "Luce Rossa: La Nascita E Le Prime Fasi Del Cinema Pornografico In Italia" (2014), there is a hardcore version of it, but the only copy available on the web is a softcore cut with very poor quality.

The title may suggest this is a mere sex flick, but the tone is more of a pretentious study of a relationship interspersed with commentary on the world of publicity. There are few sex scenes, but the running time of just 70 minutes may indicates a longer version with steammier footage was really prepared but got lost.

Rita Silva plays Sonia, a successful publicist whose marriage to a journalist is in trouble. Although she refuses to admit it, the cause of the marital crisis is her frigidity. Sonia has always sought refuge from her sexual frustration at work, but her husband eventually files for divorce. Trying to understand what's wrong with her, Sônia devises a plan, with the help of a friend named Sandra (Giovanna Petocchi), but things don't go as planned...

For a film made with extreme low budget and by a guy that is often cited as one of the worst Italian porn filmmakers, I think the result was not that bad. It is clear that Sacco put his heart in this project trying his best to make a serious work, and while some parts are undeniably naive (not to say ridiculous), there are interesting aspects too, starting with an unusual (some would say "clumsy") editing that injects an intoxicating flow into a narrative that would be extremely boring if edited conventionally.

This was the first Sacco film I saw, but it made me curious to check more of his work.