Les Filles amoureuses du pharmacien

The exploitation branch of the Swiss film industry consisted for a long time of just one man: Erwin C. Dietrich. This film is a rather typical product of his early 1980s softporn period.

As in almost all films directed by Dietrich, Peter and Walter Baumgartner were responsible for cinematography and music, respectively. Both did an exceptional job here, although one might object that Walter Baumgartner's beautiful musical score has little connection with story and characters. However, it fits very well with these plentiful depictions of blossoming fruit trees Dietrich is so keen on, and my best guess is that these blossoms serve as an allegory for the blossoming young ladies the movie is about.

Or rather, it is about showing these women prancing around in the nude - I even recall seeing them in that state hunting butterflies with butterfly nets, in slow motion, but I may have been hallucinating. Dietrich is an admirer of the fully-developed female form, and thus - although our young ladies attend the ubiquitous girls-only boarding school - they appear to be well into their twenties. The only lessons we ever get to observe are sex education lessons, and these scenes are directly lifted from Dietrich's earlier film 'Mädchen ohne Männer'.

A second story line sees a well-tanned muscle man (Mike Montana?) failing his wife (Jane Baker) in the most delicate of marital duties. Although there is a connection to our boarding-school girls, this connection is highly unconvincing.

The word 'story' also hints at the biggest weakness of this film, and the weaknesses of so much of Dietrich's other output. There is not much of a story to start with, and the pacing and editing destroy any remaining sense of coherence.

As a product for the cinema, there were limits to how much could be shown in 1980, but these limits had to be exploited to the full - if only for commercial reasons. The result is a surprisingly large number of female masturbation scenes, which also tend to go on for too long - a deficiency normally associated with hardcore pornography. Most of these scenes were cut or at least shortened in the UK release, unwittingly improving the film's pacing. Still, the 2002 DVD release is the version to be seen, especially as the picture quality is pristine.

This soft core film from Swiss filmmaker Erwin C. Dietrich, stars Brigitte Lahaie and Flore Sollier as Jenny and Juliet, the Amorous Sisters of the title. Set in a Swiss finishing school, the only teacher seems to be Miss Brown (Barbara Moose) with a class of seven girls and the only subject on the curriculum seems to be sex education lessons which the girls are more than willing to put into practise. The director has no qualms in showing both male and female full-frontal nudity, whilst lesbianism and self-pleasuring in the dormitory after lights-out is the norm in this school. Jenny's boyfriend is smuggled into the dormitory to give the girls an impromptu sex lesson. There is a surreal and fascinating sequence in which Miss Brown and her charges are running naked through he forest with butterfly nets, all shown in slow motion with a haunting music track. There is also a subplot in which Mike Montana plays a he-man character who has lost the ability to satisfy his wife in the bedroom but Jenny and Juliet devise a cunning and sexy plan to rectify the problem. If only all problems could be solved in this way.

The director has picked some picturesque Swiss locations for filming. The castle used as the school is Schloss Widen, (sometimes spelt Wyden) Ossingen, Canton Zurich. The city of Zurich is used for the night time rooftop panorama and also near the end of the film when Jenny and Juliet are walking through the old part of town, the twin towers of the Grossmunster Kirche can be seen in the background. The nature trek was filmed in the Canton of Ticino. The girls walking over the double-arched footbridge was filmed at Lavertezzo in Val Verzasca, but as yet the other villages used in the sequence remain a mystery. This film is an enjoyable romp from a time long gone and one may wonder if films like this could ever be made again.

Julchen Und Jettchen (1982)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Plotless but entertaining sleaze from Erwin C. Dietrich has Mademoiselle Blanche (Barbara Moose) teaching a class to her young female students about sex. Pretty soon the girls want to experience some of the fun.

Usually I try to say a bit more when it comes to discussing the plot but the honest truth is that there's really not too much of one here. If you're familiar with the sexploitation pictures of Dietrich then you know that stories and plots weren't high strong mark but instead he wanted to give his mostly male viewers a bunch of naked ladies. Let me restate that, he wanted to give the male viewers a bunch of beautiful naked ladies.

JULCHEN UND JETTCHEN is pretty much what you'd expect as we get some minor laughs as the schoolgirls are introduced to a sex course. You can tell the film has a low-budget because this school appears to only have one teacher, one class and one room. With that being said, the film remains entertaining simply because there are so many beautiful women on the screen with the one and only Brigitte Lahaei being the real stand out but you've also got Flore Sollier as her best friend.

Instead of an actual plot, we've basically got a bunch of vignettes where the girls find themselves in a variety of situations where they learn more about their sexuality. One minor subplot has the teacher being able to teach everyone except her muscle-bound husband who just isn't interested in sex. Obviously there's nothing ground-breaking to be found in JULCHEN AND JUTTCHEN but if you just want some mindless entertainment then this will do the trick.