Quando l'amore è oscenità

"Oscenita" is perhaps the most scandalous Renato Polselli's film.Banned for few years in Italy due to its transgressive sexual content and released in theaters in 1979 this piece of sleaze offers several sexually explicit scenes including masturbation with a candle,whipping,rape and sexual intercourse with a donkey.Unfortunately my copy of "Oscenita" is in Italian language,so the plot went beyond me,but if you are a fan of sleazy exploitation cinema you can't miss it.When it comes to Polselli I have only seen his giallo "Delirium" and Satanic sleaze "The Reincarnation of Isabel",but after seeing "Oscenita" I really want to get his other more obscure movies.8 out of 10.

Renato Polselli's Oscenita is chock full of sex, depravity and perversion; if you want to see some messed-up filth, then this film well and truly ticks that box. Somehow, though, Polselli still manages to make his film incredibly boring, the director attempting to justify his on-screen deviancy with pseudo-intellectual feminist claptrap about how badly men treat women, when his film is ostensibly a catalogue of vile, demeaning acts perpetrated against the fairer sex in the name of entertainment.

Much of the film involves a group of people gathered around a dining table talking absolute b******ks, their dull, incomprehensible conversation intercut with the marginally more interesting (if you're a bit twisted) scenes of debauchery and obscenity. It starts with a spot of rape, followed by sadism, female masturbation (using trees, branches, candles, and a corn on the cob), hardcore sex, and some fun on the farmyard with Cicci the donkey and a woman with absolutely no self-esteem. The filth is kept fairly brief, allowing more time for pretentious waffle from the annoying party guests.

I managed to find a copy of the film with English subtitles, but I can assure you that, even with subs, the film makes very little sense and is barely worth a watch, even out of curiosity.

A group of people come together and talk about transgressive sexual subjects. This is inter-cut with often graphic sex scenes involving rape, torture, bestiality, lesbianism, masturbation and other subjects you may or may not be able to think of.

I will freely admit that not being able to really speak Italian with any real ability put me at a disadvantage since a good portion of the film consists of heated discussion. Yet somehow I think that had I been able to really understand what was being said I probably would have rated this lower than a three its its filmed in a very pretentious way. My annoyance with the film comes from the feeling that the film makers wanted to make a REALLY dirty movie and felt that the only way to do it was turn it into a political or sociological discussion. I did not find it deep or meaningful, but rather dull and boring in a "thats nice dear" sort of way.

Ultimately the movie fails to be erotic because its too arty and fails to be meaningful because its too smutty. I'd let this one be unless you'd really like to see a few "taboo" fetishistic subjects portrayed in some rather awkward scenes.