Le sexe des anges

Three privileged young women more or less steal a yacht for an impromptu trip from Vienna to the Yugoslavian coast, and for further entertainment purposes also sorta-kidnap a handsome young man they've barely met. Unsurprisingly, jealousies and strife break out, there is violence, and eventually mortal peril surfaces. The problem is, most of that action happens offscreen--what's onscreen is just a lot of pretty people in skimpy bathing suits arguing. No one is particularly sympathetic here, and their company is tiresome enough that the runtime feels much longer than it is. Halfway through the characters take LSD, and you think "At last! Something will happen, and there will be visuals beyond pretty people and pretty scenery!" Then the film cuts directly to the morning after, when no one remembers what happened while they were high. What a letdown. Then the squabbling resumes.

I get it that in 1968, a high degree of exposed skin and characters talking this casually about sex and their own lack of morality would have been very new, enough to at least somewhat justify the whole otherwise rudderless enterprise. But now the effect is just boring. It's not that these actors are bad, or unattractive, it's that they aren't allowed to be interesting--they're playing spoilt adults brats whose fate we don't care about, and that in itself doesn't make any meaningful point about society or whatever. The suspense elements are too inertly handled to generate any tension at all. If the film had consisted of these four actors sunbathing for two hours, it wouldn't be very different, because that's exactly what it FEELS like.

Curiously, the very same year there was a now-largely-forgotten British film called "The Touchables" that was also about several very fashionable, superficial young women who kidnap an attractive young man and hold them captive for similar "sharing" purposes (this time in an inflatable plastic "dome" in the countryside). That movie is not exactly "good," but it is definitely fun in a datedly mod, psychedelic, wildly aestheticized way. Whereas "Sex of Angels" survives as nothing more than a testament to sun, scenery and near-nudity, things that have not gotten more compelling with age.

Il sesso degli angeli (1968), also known as The Sex of Angels, is a visually striking Italian thriller that promises more than it ultimately delivers. While boasting an intriguing premise and gorgeous cinematography, the film struggles to maintain its momentum, resulting in a somewhat uneven viewing experience.

The film's strongest asset is undoubtedly its lush, sun-drenched visuals that capture the allure of the Adriatic coast. Director Ugo Liberatore, making his feature debut, demonstrates a keen eye for composition and an ability to create an unsettling, dreamlike atmosphere through clever camerawork and lighting. The jazzy score by Giovanni Fusco also adds to the film's seductive, yet ominous tone.

Unfortunately, the narrative itself fails to live up to its provocative setup. What begins as a tantalizing psychosexual thriller about three wealthy women who kidnap a stranger for a drug-fueled weekend loses its way in the second half. The pacing slows to a crawl, and the characters' motivations become increasingly muddled and implausible. The performances are solid, with Rosemary Dexter as the unhinged ringleader making a particularly strong impression, but they can't fully compensate for the script's deficiencies.

While far from a complete misfire, Il sesso degli angeli never quite capitalizes on its intriguing premise or stylistic flair. It remains a fascinating cult curiosity from the psychedelic era and an interesting early entry in Liberatore's filmography. However, its inability to sustain its initial sense of dread and eroticism relegates it to the ranks of a flawed, though visually arresting, minor giallo/thriller.

Director, Ugo Liberatore's first film of only half a dozen or so and I have been meaning to watch his 1970 May Morning but its about bullying at oxford and I've been putting it off. This, however, is very much 1968 and has been quickly slipped into my 'Acid Erotica' list. Not that there is much skin on display here. The girls seem almost paranoid about revealing anything and are very careful how they slip their bikinis off and on. This is partly because the story seems to have them less than worldly and it seems very odd that whilst we have an LSD trip depicted (well, set up and the consequences thereof depicted) the girls do express real anxiety regarding loss of virginity. Almost the entire film takes place upon Daddy's yacht and has been mentioned by another, is reminiscent of Top Sensation and Interrabang, two superior films. Pleasant enough and whether the girls were told to act and look at each other so strangely or thats just the way they are, I don't know but it is rather unsettling at times.

Ugo Liberatore pioneered in the art of scenic, globe-hopping porn, with films visiting Bora Bora, Bali, the Pitcairn Islands, and even giving merry olde England an ethnographic slant in perhaps his best pic MAY MORNING, about weird though time-honored rituals at Oxford. THE SEX OF ANGELS is a subpar effort set on the rocky coast of Yugoslavia.

Three beautiful young girls are vacationing on a magnificent yacht (belonging to the daddy of one of them), along with a stud acquaintance they bring along for obvious reasons. Centerpiece of the film is their experimenting rather disastrously with LSD, as the stud, listlessly played by Bernard De Vries, wakes up from a bad trip with a bullet hole mysteriously in his side.

From that point on the film dwindles away in unsatisfying fashion, perhaps a victim of the "hippy-dippy" era in which it was made. The girls fail to see properly to their friend's wound and all sympathy with the characters evaporates, long before the film mercifully concludes.

I watched a German-language version of this co-production, which is probably on a par with the Italian one, since it was scripted by a top German writer-producer Franz Seitz, who contributed to many classic films including Volker Schlondorff's THE TIN DRUM and Max Schell's THE PEDESTRIAN. Unfortunately the action here is strictly pedestrian.

The beautiful stars take their tops off, making this briefly a marketable art film in 1969 from United Artists' Lopert subsidiary, which at the time was playing off numerous Ingmar Bergman films during his Max/Liv era. I found Laura Troschel, as a token lesbian, the most interesting of the three, having seen both Rosemary Dexter and Doris Kunstmann previously in far better roles -latter memorable playing Eva Braun opposite Alec Guinness's Hitler.

In its best moments SEX OF THE ANGELS captures a little bit of that rare "daylit horror" mood that in film history has been nailed most successfully in LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN and PURPLE NOON. But mainly it is just Ugo doing his standard skin flick thing as prettified as could be, setting the stage for EMMANUELLE and endless Euro trash softcore sex films shot in exotic settings, of which I still think Hubert Frank's VANESSA was the pinnacle.

This little gem here has nothing to do with sexploitation or exploitation in general. The title is absolutely inappropriate and misleading. It's a very subtle psychological drama, with little or no T&A. Maybe the most approriate way to describe it would be Euripides "Bacchae" on LSD. The other parallel would be Roman Polanski "Knife in the water" but with a guy and three girls insted of a guy, young woman and an older man. Girls are gorgeous, music is terrific, Adriatic sea is beautiful. The only significant low point is an episode in a yugoslav pharmacy, which is corny to say the least. Some people here have complained about the ending, but it works perfectly fine for me.