Fleur de vice

This film often drifting between artful provocation and unintentional parody, is a curious blend of erotic fantasy and surreal atmosphere. The cinematography leans heavily into soft, sepia-tinged palettes, with browns, creams, and the occasional flash of orange bathing the labyrinthine hotel in a haze that is more somnolent than sensual. There is a deliberate, almost hypnotic pacing to the visuals, evoking the languor of a dream just on the edge of slipping away, yet the intended eroticism feels oddly muted and sometimes even awkward. The film's atmosphere is thick with a sense of voyeurism, but it never quite achieves the sophistication or allure of its European softcore contemporaries, instead settling for a series of vignettes that are as likely to elicit confusion as they are arousal.

Clio Goldsmith, cast as the wide-eyed ingénue Anny, is the film's undeniable centerpiece. Her performance is earnest, if somewhat limited by the script's fixation on her physical presence rather than emotional nuance. Goldsmith's naivete and vulnerability are palpable, and she manages to anchor the film even as it drifts into increasingly bizarre territory. Donatella Damiani, as the enigmatic landlady, brings a touch of Romanesque mystique, though her role rarely rises above decorative. Catherine Spaak and Fernando Rey, both seasoned performers, are given a framing story that promises more intrigue than it delivers; Rey, in particular, brings a weary gravitas to his scenes as the beleaguered publisher, but the film rarely capitalizes on his talent. The supporting cast is competent, though the characters themselves are so thinly drawn that their eccentricities feel more like quirks for the sake of quirkiness than meaningful contributions to the narrative.

Despite the film's ambitions, the overall effect is more bewildering than erotic. The production design is sparse, sometimes bordering on cheap, and the score by Riz Ortolani, while occasionally evocative, too often lapses into syrupy melodrama. There are moments that hint at a more sophisticated exploration of desire and fantasy, but these are undercut by clumsy humor and abrupt scene transitions. The film's attempts at provocation, ranging from voyeuristic set pieces to surreal bath scenes, rarely land with the intended impact, leaving an aftertaste of missed opportunity rather than genuine intrigue.

Years ago, in the primitive days of 1980s VHS, Blockbuster Video routinely cobbled together respectable arthouse films and C and D-grade exploitation pictures to comprise its "Foreign" section. Gianfranco Angelucci's 'Honey' falls into the latter camp. For years, it was only available in a poorly dubbed, pan-and-scan VHS version, with a truncated runtime and an alluring picture on the back of nude Clio Goldsmith climbing into a Victorian bathtub, in a bizarre room walled with stacks of cotton - and they circulated this cassette at many Blockbuster locations. If memory serves, Media Video distributed it.

More recently, a European blu-ray firm decided to remaster the picture in 4k and issue it in letterbox, subtitled, with its full runtime - so I got my hands on a copy, eager to check it out again, and suspecting that the excisions from the movie could account for the mediocrity and/or lack of clarity.

No such luck. I'm afraid the restoration didn't help matters. This is a murky, dull, unfocused picture, apparently intended as scintillating and erotic, a kind of softcore Alice in Wonderland, but boring as hell. It has several gauzy smoker-calibre love scenes (including female-on-female foreplay, shot through the latticework of a boudoir screen in the said bathroom, and voyeurism courtesy of a bedroom mirror), clumsy attempts at bawdy humor, cheap production design, a grating and drippy score, and a story that travels absolutely nowhere in a hurry. There are also sleazy touches throughout, such as a dildo-shaped remote lightswitch, that add nothing other than crude yuks; watching this is like playing "where's Waldo" to find the perverse easter eggs. Goldsmith (then the future sister-in-law of Queen Camilla Parker-Bowles) was gorgeous, to be certain, and the movie benefits from a semi-intriguing framing story, with the gifted Buñuel vet Fernando Rey as a harried, victimized book publisher. Otherwise, this is a Eurotrash-stuffed frozen turkey.

Given a little more skill, intelligence and taste, the creators might have produced something along the lines of the original Emmanuelle, but anyone who expects that degree of sophistication or sexiness will feel sorely disappointed.

Clio Goldsmith looks great, dressed and undressed. Catherine Spaak looks good too, being only dressed. Together with Fernando Rey, all three they have three stupid roles, below their value. The only one who has a funny role is Luc Merenda. The movie, except for Clio Goldsmith's nude scenes, is a waste of time. 3 stars, just for the 3 actors, Goldsmith, Spaak and Rey, the last 2 being very good in many other films.

This is a superior example of a European softporno, one of the few that dares to use the form of a (kind of) drama, without pretending to have become an arthouse picture. In other words: we are not subjected to the violence, humiliation, or silly humour that is so common in 1970s sleaze or the B-movies of the video era; neither do we have to endure any attempts to bring a message across as in the naughtier arthouse pics. This is an erotic film, full stop.

Miele di donna belongs to the rare breed of films which are genuinely erotic rather than just titillating. Its strength is the semi-real and overcharged atmosphere created by the cinematography, the sets, and Ortolani's excellent music. It is somewhat debatable whether it was a good move to cast Clio Goldsmith in the lead, as she does not manage to radiate any innocence as her character seems to demand and she generally appears a wee bit bland. However, one could argue that her character's innocence is faked anyway, after all she is the focus of a female sexual fantasy; actually, of two female fantasies, as the bulk of the film is a dream in a story in another story. In this sense, Ms Goldsmith plays a nice faked innocence.

(1981) Honey/Miele di donna DUBBED DRAMA

Co-written and directed by Gianfranco Angelucci which has an inspired young woman(Catherine Spaak) coming to (Fernardo Rey) expensive household to confront him at his front door to force him to read her manuscript at gunpoint. And she forces him to read it out loud, and by the time he reads the title "Pension of Desire" it is during then the pretend re-enactment comes to life, which we find out the title on the manuscript is a name of a hotel, focusing on the made up character named Anny (Clio Goldsmith) just arriving as she is witnessing the going-on's of the hotel, beginning with the above small window in the towel room to the one bathroom. Meeting nothing but eccentric characters, which there is no objective.

Upon looking at the running time of less than a hour and a half, I was wondering whether or not "Honey" had been shortened since whether there's going to be an attempted make out scene or some other, it is usually cut short, and if it is then there is nothing erotic about it, which the vague and sudden opening serves nothing more than a backdrop to the nude scenes, much of it to the actress Clio Goldsmith therefore the only thing you can do is do nothing but just look and stare. One thing i want to point out is when full frontal is shown, mostly female, shown in movies coming out of Italy, it's most popular when it's aligned with slasher films like Giallo, Jess Franco or Lucio Fulcio. If I can tolerate it on slasher films than I can also tolerate this shown like a drama as well.