Chastity

Cher is agreeably pithy and cynical as a runaway named Chastity (she got the name from the dictionary). She's a wiseass, she's adorable, she's moody, she tosses off quips and straight lines like a jaded pro. This was Cher's third movie proper (following "Wild On The Beach" and "Good Times") and it's fun to see her in Cleopatra eye-makeup and her old nose. So many bad things have been said or written about this film that I half-expected a disaster, but it's clear right from the beginning the movie is visually expressive and evocative. Directed by someone named Alessio de Paola (an alias?), one tends to suspect writer-producer Sonny Bono held the reins, and if so he has a genuine feel for border towns and nowhere-places where people are cheerfully giving but eventually want payback. The picture begins to sag a bit in the middle when Cher tries her hand at prostitution and has a lesbian encounter with the cathouse madam (lots of fingers touching and wind through the trees, that kind of thing). But I certainly admired the film's gritty quality and easy pace. For her part, Cher concocts a true original in our heroine, talking to herself in the third person ("So, Chastity old girl, whaddya wanna do now?") and when her question to a gentleman bedfellow is met with a surprising answer, she tells him quietly in the dark, "I'm smiling." **1/2 from ****

Sonny Bono wrote, produced, financed and probably directed (using a pseudonym) this witless entertainment, made at a time when Hollywood did not know how to draw in a younger audience. This film did not help matters. Valuable only as having captured Cher's first performance in a dramatic role, CHASTITY follows an aimless, wandering young woman in search of something... we never quite know what. She does talk about wanting to be loved, but she runs from that, both at the start of the movie and in the final shot. A narration makes an attempt to hold the movie together, but Bono's dialog and situations are so forced and contrived the viewer is never allowed to engage with her apparent angst. CHASTITY is a cynical take on what ailed late-60s youth, but emerges as shallow and condescending toward the very audience Sonny Bono wanted to embrace.

Sonny Bono saved up his money and made this film starring his wife and its really not bad. You shouldn't expect great acting but Cher does show her early raw style here and even in scenes where she's required to cry she does it admirably. Script isn't bad either but all the talking she does to herself gets annoying after a while and I really didn't buy the whole Mexican brothel part at all. Her character is just to smart and in control to do something so brash and foolish. Now, about the nudity. There are two scenes where Cher is supposedly nude and in one scene you don't see her face at all so I'm assuming its a body double. But in the other scene it kind of looks like her though her hair is in the way and the room is dark so while I'm not 100% sure I do think it might be her where you see a glimpse of Cher's breast. The film ends on an emotional level where the voices in her head let us the viewer find out what's wrong with her and the last scene of an emotional Cher on the side of the road I think is just a solid job of acting. Solid effort by all including Sonny who produced, wrote and scored the music. I kept expecting to see Sonny pop up in a cameo but he never does. Interesting hippie flick with solid acting.

In Cher's first attempt in a dramatic role she is found drifting through her young teenage life searching for her identity.She hitch-hikes to Mexico picking up truck-drivers as well as a boyfriend along the way.Her dysfunctional family and abuse follows her ,haunting her as she lives out her escapades wearing the same top and jeans till it makes you a bit nauseous! Her foray into the comfort of lesbianism,is short-circuited by her traditional American values,and Chastity tries the "straight life" one more failed time.The script is trite,and the story jaded .Cher has said the rough stuff was excluded,as Sonny Bono couldn't stand to see his wife do "those things". All in all a cool 60's trip,with an amateurish and weird aura! Chasity later became the name of Cher's daughter conceived during this movie!

She was born in a wagon of a travelin' show, her mama used to dance for the money they'd throw. Yes, it's pre-nose-job Cher in her absolutely wretched dramatic debut, as a sullen and surly hitchhiking runaway with a heart of pressed tin. With her grating voice and punk-ass demeanor, she can often be misconstrued as acting, but do not be fooled - she is simply a marionette in the hands of producer Sonny `Svengali' Bono (whom one can also presume was also the never-heard-of-before and never-heard-from-again director de Paola). Chastity is a disturbed young woman who hits the road to escape her dreary, unhappy life, and finds more dreariness and unhappiness. In this turgid and lugubrious script, she takes her anger out on men by picking them up, leading them on and then `not letting them get anything.' She works as a prostitute without ever having to give up `the goods,' and winds up in a Mexican whorehouse for a lesbian madam who would like Chastity to be something more than an employee. With a creepy introspective/philosophical voiceover narrative by Cher, it is hippie-age BS and you can definitely see her *Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves* period looming on the horizon. Chastity is perplexing in a way that is peculiarly unintriguing, and despite all her woes, she is supremely unsympathetic. Her eventual confession of being abused as a child may have been shocking in 1969, but in retrospect, it is entirely predictable. There are some who will dig deeply to find some merit to this film, but it should strictly be taken as what it is: pure camp - meaning, of course, that's it's hysterically funny while it tries desperately to be serious. Would *you* name *your* child after this? `Chastity.pick her up if you dare.' Indeed.