Language of Love

Searching round for the Christina Lindberg-starring Anita,I happily stumbled on a box set with the flick. Whilst it is called "Christina Lindberg's Erotica", the set came out during the peak era of odd DVD collections, which is presumably why a title was included not featuring Lindberg! This led to me learning the language of love.

View on the film:

Done a few years before the Golden Age of Adult Cinema started rising, director Torgny Wickman keeps to a matter of fact manner,with the dry discussions on sexual education being saved by the meek clothes. Keeping clinical,Wickman pairs the shot with the lights off sex scenes with animation detailing the intercourse, and chopping off any feelings of erotica from a loving language.

"Language of Love" is a tedious sex education-cum-softcore porn flick with some of the familiar bugbears of that kind of thing.

For one thing, it centres around a panel of actual sex therapists, most of whom make you wonder if they chose to become expert sexologists because that was the closest they could come to getting laid.

These experts tell us pieces of information that probably weren't even that surprising back in 1969, ie., that masturbation is normal, that sexual fantasies are normal, that women like sex too, whatever.

Interspersed there are of course scenes of a sexual nature, which are fairly unerotic. It is of course possible that they were intended this way, but it doesn't seem like it. It looks like typical soft porn from the late '60s and '70s, and they even got a circular, rotating bed for the actors to spin around on.

There are some still shots of penises and vaginas, as you can well imagine, but for some reason the complexion of the models involved is an odd, corpse-like grey/yellow.

It's like the movie is trying to teach you about sex, and then trying to discourage you from having it.

So, after all these years, the UK censors finally allow me to see infamous little sex education movie. Acquiring this within the Christine Lindberg box set ( and no she is not in it!) I'd thought I might pop it in the player and get a flavour or fast forward through the anticipated 50 minutes or so running time. But no, this runs almost 100 minutes and isn't at all bad. Hardly dated either, except the sex educators are all about 50 whereas they somehow would all be more like 20 if this were made today. Sound information and advice, saucy clips and if most of the performers do look a bit frightful, they still do well enough and the ghastly look of some may be due to deterioration of the film stock. Just towards the end the interviews and examination for various contraceptive devices seemed to go on a bit but otherwise, I found this well put together and surprisingly enjoyable. Fetishes were mentioned but not shown and there was no mention of homosexuality.

Very odd adult film, that I found out was shown in "taxi driver" ( the adult film in the theatre).

This movie is about a woman who explains her childhood, and adulthood expireances with sex.

X rated

Not that bad. Made as an "information film" (Swe. upplysningsfilm) about sex, biologically and socially, during the 60's, I have to say that for its purpose it's well all right. Pretty amusing to sit through, never boring, but ridiculous and nerdy indeed sometimes.

But I think what the Swedes really need, is not an information film about sex, but an information film about love.

3/5