Paprika

Tinto Brass has made some things worth watching in my mind. He chooses to make erotic films, which is fine by me.

I'm interested in erotic films. Naturally, they are enjoyable, the good ones that avoid the damages associated with porn. But they are something deep in us too, something having to do with performance.

In a real erotic film, you'll have an actress (at the very least an actress) who is performing as a character who is performing for us. In porn, there is no difference; in erotic art, there is. Tinto in his better works understands this, and plays with it — sometimes — in effective ways.

This film is worse in the way it works, and is better in how the story bends to the purpose. The story is about another layer of performing. Our heroine not only performs for our pleasure, but for also (as a prostitute) for a seemingly endless series of men.

So the setup is fine.

Making something that is erotic requires that the artist in charge decide what is erotic. Now that's a matter purely of style and not art. The choices he's made this time are different than the ones he's known for, though they seem superficially similar. But this woman is genuinely fat, thickwaisted. She has bad teeth and (the only thing that really matters) she carries herself gracelessly.

You'll want to pass on this one, I think.

Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.

The movie does have a plot that traces the adventures of a young prostitute. But do people really watch and rewatch this movie for its plot? I doubt it very much! The main reason to watch this movie is young Deborah Caprioglio, photographed from every angle at the peak of her voluptuous beauty. She is breathtakingly beautiful, and Tinto Brass's light-hearted eroticism found its most memorable protagonist. The actress continues to make movies, but nothing measures up to the visual impact of this film.

Loosely based on John Cleland's 1748 classic novel Fanny Hill this Italian adaptation celebrates lead actress Debora Caprioglio at her peak. Set in the 50s, Debora.plays Mimma a lovestruck girl who takes up escorting to support her backstabbing fiance. Over time she learns the truth and begins her journey as a courtesan and companion.

Those of us who know who Tinto Brass is, and what he stands for, will appreciate this movie. What I didn't know was, the movie. I never heard of it untill recently (2023)

It was it's usual quirky, naked women , who cares, and couldn't give a damn what you think, which I love about this movie.. Typical of Tinto Brass.

How he got away with what he did, how he got so many women to appear naked in a movie, I'll never know. How the women said yes, is. Amazing.

I've seen many of his movies and the best part is, they were great, and never at any stage, made the actresses appear vulnerable. From what I see, all the actresses were supported and made feel safe, unlike what has and continues to happen., in a country, I cannot understand (America) people wish to still go to.

This movie was of it's era yet, it was done tastefully. Cudos to Tinto, the cast, and everyone envolved in the production.

Some will see it as a sex film, their loss. They will never understand what this movie means.

One of the best he ever made.

Most people watch Paprika for the softcore erotica or Tinto Brass's signature visual flair, but there's more going on under the surface. If you listen closely, Mimma says she's from Pola/Pula, in Istria (Yugoslavia, now Croatia). That's not a throwaway detail. By the 1950s, that area was no longer part of Italy, and most Italians had already left. So Mimma might not even be ethnically Italian.

Then she's given the nickname "Paprika." Not an Italian word. It's Slavic-coded, tied to a Central European / Hungarian dish. Together, these details frame her as not just a naïve girl from the countryside, but as someone even more foreign. Rural, backward, sexually uninhibited. It plays into racialized and exoticized stereotypes that are easy to miss unless you know the region's history.

Mimma's transformation into Paprika isn't just about becoming a sex worker. It's about becoming the other. Visually and narratively. Whether Tinto Brass meant this as a critique or simply leaned into the trope is unclear. But the trope is there, and it's worth thinking about.

That said, what's powerful about Paprika is that it doesn't just show off the morals of the 1950s. Watching it more than 30 years after it was made, you also see the 1990s all over it. The film critiques postwar sexual repression, but it does it through a 90s lens that often romanticized and objectified women from "the East." You can read it as a double mirror. One looking at how women's sexuality was policed, the other reflecting how "foreignness" was framed as either a threat or a fetish.