The Story of O

"Story of O" is luxuriant, nicely photographed, and Corinne Clery is quite appealing as a sensual actress…

The film is an adaptation of Pauline Reage's novel about a young girl called O and her entry into the art of loving… The special philosophy here is that women, by nature, are inferior to men and should therefore submit to their every emotion and desire. This is the only way for a woman to find ecstasy…

O falls in love with a practitioner of this doctrine, and is forced to go through quite a lot before he will take her in…

The treatment of eroticism is slow and careful… O is initiated into a house of bondage where the women are playthings for the male clientele… No talking or complaining is permitted... If the rules are broken, they are "punished" in the collar with whips and chains...

One can call this film a lot of things, but "subtle" isn't one of them… Still, it's not overly offensive either, despite its extremely one-sided view of femininity... It does have a seductive quality, and we are attracted into its exotic fact or assumption largely because of Corinne Clery's beauty and sensuality

I admit I know little about the S+M/B+D lifestyle, but if this is any indication, it must be kind of like being in a bad European "art" film. This is one movie that truly does not deserve its notorious reputation(either in the negative or positive sense). It's just your typical silly and pretentious 70's Eurotrash. It is slightly less boring than the director's previous "Emmannuelle" (1974) but only slightly. The lead (and only conceivable reason to watch this nonsense) is Corrine Clery,who was later a second-string Bond girl eaten by vicious dobermans in "Moonraker". Clery spends most of the movie naked and being whipped by various men and women. This certainly sounds pretty sordid, but the movie (tastefully?) never shows the whip actually hitting her. And though she is almost constantly being flogged, there never seems to be a mark on her on her perpetually on-display body. She is also passed around by various men, but the sex scenes are even more circumspect than the whipping scenes. I'd enjoy watching Clery doing anything naked(mowing the lawn, painting a fence, digging a garden), but there's just nothing especially exciting here. Mostly, the movie consists of cheesy dialogue and idiotic libertine philosophizing. I don't know if you have to be a sadist to enjoy it, but you definitely have to be a masochist to sit through it.

Just Jaeckin's film version of the celebrated novel by Pauline Reage manages to completely miss the point of her work (by changing the ending, specifically), but taken purely as a movie has a certain amount of interest.

Corrine Clery plays 'O', a photographer who is taken by her boyfriend Rene (Udo Kier) to a sado-masochistic den where she willingly submits to physical and sexual abuse. 'O's motivation was much more obvious within the novel, but here it is secondary to the titallating spectacle of soft porn. Clery is not really the ideal 'O', either, her looks being too idealistic and her acting just too bad.

After a spell in the academy which serves to turn her into a total submissive she is practically sold on to Sir Stephen (50s pin-up Anthony Steel, of all people!) who is even more depraved and dominating than anyone else she has met. Perhaps the strongest sections of the film concern 'O's relationship with Sir S, but I wasn't convinced by the changed ending (powerful though it was from a movie standpoint). The cinematography is also attractive, particularly in its use of colour, and the French language version adds a certain mystique to the story.

I have read the book quite few times and I decided to see the movie even though I knew it was not going to be anything even near to the book's incredibly erotic atmosphere. I have been disappointed before with movie adaptations of books but this one is by far the worst ever. The acting is bad, the settings are cheap and the sex scenes are awfully boring. They concentrate endless minutes on tits and nsist on some sort of bad taste loud background music. Totally bad. Not even the taxi scene can be saved. Those mini kisses they give each other are just so out of purpose. The ending also goes against the idea of the book, makes the whole thing become meaninsgless, to begin with her name "O". Use the rental money to buy the book instead.

I caught this film on a German satellite channel a few months ago. The locations and characters are sophisticated (no tattoos body piercing or lewd behaviour). There is a story line but the way in this is filmed is incredibly stunning and highly erotic. Corinne Clery a remarkably beautiful women, must be very pleased at the Playboy quality of the production. I rate this in the top 5 of any erotic film I have ever seen and recommend you to buy a copy if you can find one to keep. This is the benchmark against which all directors of this film genre should aspire to.