Sesso acerbo

One of Joe Damato's obscure films with few actors and sex. It takes place somewhere in Italy and deals with a young man learning to have sex with elder woman. The film looks like afternoon TV soap opera, but everything is shown in order to get the effect of dramatic softcore. That is why Massachess is so special - he manages to make serious backgrounds in such mechanical and senseless porno rip-offs. I saw this in Italian saw I could hardly understand what was going on. Actually just some town views, a lot of dialogs and sex between everybody who is shown more than two minutes- no hardcore. At least in the version that we could find. Truly for thrash cinema collectors only!

SESSO ACERBO (1981)

Quite surprising this porn movie directed by the legendary Joe D'Amato, under the alias of Alexandre Borsky. Shot in February 1981, it is part of a series of 15 titles he produced, the so called "Borsky series", 11 of which he also directed. Years ago, I had checked some of them, but none were so well developed plot wise like this "Sesso Acerbo". The only print available, in very poor condition, is the softcore one (although preserving some very explicit details). According to the book "Luce Rossa", the hardcore cut is shorter and eliminates parts of the narrative. This is a very intriguing aspect and makes me wonder if the other films of this series, available in hardcore version only with little to no plot, had their narrative parts removed. D'Amato himself had pointed to the fact that it was useless to make porn with plot, as the distributors used to discard the story parts in favor of an endless marathon of sex scenes.

Pauline Teutscher plays Helen, a married woman frustrated for not having children. Tired of the housewife lifestyle, she decides to find a job, taking care of a 16 year old boy (ok, this is a weird aspect, given that the boy is healthy, both physically and mentally, so I could not understand why he needed a babysitter). The fact is that Helen sees in him a way of satisfying her maternal instinct, but the boy develops sexual interest in her and soon Helen, although feeling guilty, will surrender to his advances. To make things more complicated, Helen's husband Sacha (Roland Carey) is having an affair with the boy's mother (Laura Levi).

As I said, this movie is more developed in terms of script than the average porn product, and Pauline Teutscher's performance, as a woman in the middle of a moral conflict, is very solid for an actress of the genre. No doubts she had potential for a career in "normal" cinema. Still about the cast, the choice of Roland Carey as the male protagonist was a great relief, after so many movies starred by the nefarious Mark Shanon in the period. A veteran of B movies in the 60's, Carey had a decent presence and if he had replaced Shanon in films such as "Porno Holocaust", the end result would be much more easy to sit through.

Technically, "Sesso Acerbo" is not as inspired as D'Amato's softcore efforts, but still preserves a minimum of respect for the cinematic language. The lack of enthusiasm of the director for XXX material is evident in the lazy choice of shooting some of the narrative parts in just one camera angle, typically a master shot featuring all the actors in the frame, without cuts to show alternative angles or closer shots of the performers. This technical approach, probably used to save time and money, is a trademark in the porn made by D'Amato, especially the ones made in the 90's, and tends to add a terrible sense of boringness. Also typical of D'Amato, we have the obligatory scene of the protagonist walking in the streets, and here it is particularly longer, perhaps to help to fill the space left with the removal of the explicit sex stuff.

The sex scenes are very well performed, clearly not simulated, shorter and with more realism than usual, and the lack of genital close-ups enables the performes to engage in more confortable positions, without all the contortionism present porn scenes.

Lost in the limbo of deep obscurity, I doubt that "Sesso Acerbo" will surface in a decent print someday, as the "Alexandre Borsky period" receives no attention of the majority of D'Amato's fans. A shame, at least in this particular case.