I admit that I am a big fan of the more adult and explicit side of Joseph W. Sarno's film career (Butterfly, Kärleksön, Fäbodjäntan...). So, here is my great disappointment with the film we are dealing with today. A stupid plot (really, the role of an archaeologist was the best option to spice up the story?) and a tedious narrative rhythm. They spend the whole film telling sexual anecdotes as if we were in a confessional, instead of using the cinematic concept to show these stories in images.
Too much verbiage, a lot of text and not enough sex. And when they decide to show some skin, it turns out that they only do it from the waist up, without showing, at least, some of the explicit sex that is so much talked about (and that all of us "Sarnist" viewers would have enjoyed). Some breasts, lots of grimacing and arms moving out of frame, that's all you'll get here. And nothing else, because the story is very poorly written and very boring.
This should be adult cinema, not a pseudo drama of triangular love affairs with simulated (or out of frame) sex. And it's a shame because, although the actors are up to what is expected of a good erotic/pornographic project, it turns out that nobody really shows their respective talents in that area (Why choose Eric Edwards or Anita Ericsson to play erotic-dramatic roles, without any grace?). And that's Sarno's fault. His laziness in the project, and his clouded interpretation of morbidity. I'm sorry, but in that sense, Sarno was never up to Radley Metzger (or Henry Paris, as you like).
The gorgeous and sexy Mary Mendum spends the entire film with a circumspect expression, as if she didn't quite understand how to bring her character to life and colour. And the debut of the beautiful Cathja Graff could have been a sensational discovery in contact cinema, but she goes so unnoticed that we would never see her again in any other work (by her own decision or someone else's, it doesn't matter).
I got very bored subtitling it in my language for the commercial version, and that doesn't happen to me very often. And I'm very sorry because, although Sarno is a reference in the alternative adult cinema world, he has some works that are quite tiring due, in part, to that commercial need that demands the label "for (almost) all audiences".
