Così dolce... così perversa

Caroll Baker :from Elia Kazan and John Ford to Umberto Lanzi:what a fall!to be fair,you must underline she played opposite Nicholson -quite well- in the overlooked "ironweed" ;this is not the kind of movie Jean Louis Trintignant must be very proud of !two years after Claude Chabrol's "Les Biches " in which he slept with two bisexual women too.

The first part recalls a poor man's Chabrol,depicting the luxury world of the bourgeoisie .Trintignant ,a very earnest thespian,seems ill at ease ,but the women often strip bare ,to the viewer's great enjoyment.

The second part is Lenzi trying to make his own "Diaboliques" :the heroine 's first name is Nicole ,like in Clouzot's classic ;it's almost absolute plagiarism -except for the mediocre ending- ,including the "clues" Baker scatters to frighten her mate and to make her believe that her dear husband might possibly be still alive .

Take Dario Argento's movies instead:their screenplays ,though influenced by Hitchcock ,are much more exciting and original.

A zillionaire (Jean-Louis Trintignant) strays from his frigid wife Danielle (Erika Blanc), winding up in an affair with a woman named Nicole (Carroll Baker). All goes well until Nicole's ex-lover Klaus (Horst Frank) starts creeping around.

SO SWEET... SO PERVERSE is a twisty giallo from Director Umberto Lenzi. The story seems to take its cues from DIABOLIQUE. While not quite as masterful as that film this movie does have its memorable moments, especially during the finale.

Ms.' Baker and Blanc are as beautifully beguiling as ever, and Frank is extraordinarily sinister! He's always been a good heavy, and uses his skills well here...

Great title and if not particularly appropriate for the film, no matter, for this is a fine film. Carroll Baker, excellent as ever, although she does keep herself fairly well covered here and not always in the most stunning of outfits, Jean-Louis Trintignant does pretty much what he always does, well and Erika Blanc puts in a very strong performance. Solid directing by Lenzi, might have been stylish but pan and scan print ensures it does not appear so, and for the first half we have a rather fun, colourful and bright story of an extramarital affair. Things change, however, just as we begin to wonder if all is as it seems things change very much indeed. Hardly any blood or bare skin for that matter but a most involving tale, exceedingly well told, that certainly starts to flip about towards the end. Indeed until the very end!

Wikipedia calls this a giallo film, which I don't entirely see. I guess giallo doesn't have to be horror, but still. I guess the closer it leans into giallo stuff, the better So Sweet...So Perverse. There are some really feverish and bizarre scenes that play out in a zone that's somewhere between dream and nightmare. When things get more focused on the drama (all around a scheme that involves murder and infidelity), it's appropriately silly and heightened. It doesn't push those things too far, to the point where the film starts becoming an accidental parody of itself, but it comes fairly close in any event.

I came away from it not feeling hugely enthusiastic, but for some of its offbeat energy, a few sequences, and an undeniable sense of style, I also can't call it bad.

This movie (not to be confused with another Carroll Baker vehicle "Kiss Me, Kill Me" aka "Baba Yagi--the Witch")is Umberto Lenzi's follow-up to his groundbreaking classic "Paranoia". It came out the same year as Dario Argento's "The Bird with Crystal Plumage" (the film which started the deluge of Italian gialli) and was produced by the Martino brothers, who later made a number of interesting giallo films (usually featuring Eugenio Martino's alluring mistress, Edwige Fenech). It stars Carroll Baker, demonstrating her acting chops here by playing a character that is the exact opposite of the naive victim she played in "Paranoia", and it also features two excellent, native European actors--Jean Loius Trintignant and the gorgeous Erica Blanc. The script is surprisingly well-written and full of suspense and genuine surprises. It is a clever variation on the classic French film "Diabolique" with a decadent, high-society husband (Tritignant), wife (Blanc), and mistress (Baker) all crossing and double-crossing each other. It cleverly plays with the viewers awareness of the earlier film before throwing in an unexpected curve.

It also seems to be very well filmed. (It's hard to believe that years later Lenzi would be making nauseating and inept cannibal films like "Cannibal Ferox" or just plain inept American slasher movies like "Hitcher in the Dark"). I say seems, however, because this film is only available on second or third generation copies of Greek videotapes that are not only panned-and-scanned, but are very badly panned-and-scanned so that the characters are often halfway off the screen. Trying to appreciate this movie is like trying to appreciate a beautiful painting that has both sides cropped off and is covered with really murky cellophane (and burnt-in Greek subtitles). If Lenzi's crap movies like "Ferox", "Hitcher", and even, god help us all,"Eaten Alive", can get the star DVD treatment, why can't "Paranoia" or this little gem?

Oh, but I almost forgot--despite the title there isn't too much perversity here. Baker has a lot more nude scenes in "Paranoia". There is some Blanc-related nudity (although, in my opinion, you can never have enough of that), but the lesbian relationship between the two of them is unfortunately only hinted at. Of course, it may just have been cropped out. . .