Therese and Isabelle

This is a film.., not porn.

This is a wonderful film!!! Full of tender moments and memories!! A beautiful piece of work!!! Excellent!!! For intelligent, viewers only!!!

If you are a film lover. A romantic. A person who has loved deeply, this is your film!!!!

It has a beautiful surreal quality. Fine acting and directing. Watching this film made me remember my first love.

Thi is a film for those who want to reflect on life, love and the meaning of loss.

Highly recommended for all film lovers.

I must admit, when I read the description of the genre on Netflix as "Steamy Romance" I was a little bit skeptical. "Steamy"? In a movie from 1968?? I was prepared for disappointment. And when I realized it was shot entirely in black & white, I knew my erotic hopes were dashed.

Boy, was I wrong! Not only does this film have all of the elements of a steamy romance -- the discovery of first love, fear of the secret being found out, a sudden unexpected end -- but at times this movie was downright erotic. You will soon forget that it is shot in black & white. The cinematography deserves every accolade it has received over the years. And the performances from the two stars (Essy Persson and Anna Gael) are intense and memorable. OK, so they're both in their mid twenties trying to play school girls. It's 1968. Do you really expect teenagers from the '60s to be able to effectively explore a lesbian love story like this? Many adult women were still trying to come to grips with their sexuality back then. Anyone looking for real teens here is expecting too much.

I think this movie was way ahead of its time. The level of eroticism was an unexpected pleasure; yet it still managed to leave a lot to the imagination, opting instead to give us poetic descriptions to add to what we were shown.

I have no doubt lesbians will identify with the characters here. As for you straight guys who love watching lesbians in action: Although it won't be all you expect, I don't think you'll be too, too disappointed.

You hope for a good film, you get promised a good film, you pay good money for a film, you view film and... oh jeez, its a load of crap!

Disappointment #1: Its black and white. My fault. Read those labels!

Disappointment #2: The "girls" are clearly in their late twenties. Now I really have to work hard to believe this story, but wait...

Disappointment #3: There is no story! I won't spend much effort describing how thin the plot (and I use the term loosely) is. There is no drama. I expected to see them meet, do things together, friendship deepen, etc. It doesn't happen.

Disappointment #4: Practically no nudity. If you're not going to provide any cinematic value, at least let me see some pretty, nude women! Why do you think people would buy this film anyway? For the record, the women are beautiful, and you do see them naked from the waist up for a few seconds. Not enough to even make it to the "tease" level. Stories can be very erotic without explicit graphics if told with style, but such finesse is beyond the range of this director.

Summary: A complete disappointment on every level.

It was a serious attempt to show the developing sexuality of two schoolgirls and did not try to exploit its fact… Even by today's standards, the film is interesting and provocative…

Therese and Isabelle are both attending the same girl's school… Therese is energetic, intelligent, and becomes a mentor for the innocent, naive, sweet Isabelle… She guides her through a number of exotic experiences, including a trip through an exclusive brothel, into her first lesbian liaison, and indirectly into her first heterosexual experience…

The film does not exploit any sex, nor is there an abundance of nudity... The imagery is effective, but sometimes the camera lingers too long, and the story goes slowly…

The director, Radley Metzger, went on to make a number of explicit erotic films under the name of Henry Paris… He always has extremely detailed stories, good acting, and very high standards of cinematography...

Artistically, however, this is perhaps his most complete… His later attempts supplied for entertainment, whereas "Therese and Isabelle" was a study into the nature of youthful eroticism...

I originally saw this film in 1968 at a pre-release press screening. It was in (apparently dubbed) French with English subtitles. I found the film charming, with a wonderful music score by Georges Auric. I subsequently saw the film at a local theater - in (apparently dubbed) English. The film had been cut with much of the lengthy erotic scenes trimmed. The dubbed dialogue was not only delivered poorly, but the banality of it was taxing. The French language version with subtitles lent a poetic effect to the film, although if I understood French perhaps it would have sounded as banal as the English.