This is not bawdy legend ;it is fact ; during a hundred years "l'épreuve du congrès" (= trial by congress) was imposed by the Church :sexual relations with one's spouse was meant to beget children ;should the husband be impotent , it was an act against religion ,so the marriage was dissolved and his possessions went to the wife .
The husband was put on trial : he had to make love with his wife in front of note-taking witnesses. This hateful practice ,which turned human beings into animals ,was abolished in 1677.
Corentin's wedding takes place in 1664 and his marriage has not be consummated, if we are to believe the unfortunate wife ; but it might be a mother-in-law 's trick to latch onto the husband's estate .
One can dream of what Pier Paolo Pasolini would have made with such a lewd subject ; Roland Giraud and Andréa Ferreol are ideally cast ,but the former has a tendency to underplay whereas the latter hams it up ;director Marboeuf 's treatment is heavy-handed, devoid of any finesse ,and the screenplay is repetitive ;some gags are hackneyed : the obligatory " ceiling and bed which shake" scene was used many times before,notably in the superior Alberto Lattuada's "la mandragola" (1966);the French are indeed no match for the Italians in this field.
