Anna, quel particolare piacere

SECRETS OF A CALL GIRL is an odd little Italian drama, playing out in part as a Eurocrime movie complete with Richard Conte as a mafia boss. However, for most of the running time this is a slow-moving character drama involving Edwige Fenech's unlucky in love girl, who falls in with a real creep of a character before finding love elsewhere - but is it too late? Drug smuggling and prostitution are the order of the day here, none of it particularly appealing, and as usual the only thing they know to do with Fenech is make her strip. The ending is unique, I'll give it that.

Anna (Edwige Fenech, Perché quelle strane gocce di sangue sul corpo di Jennifer, excellent giallo from the same), is a young pub cashier in a small asleep provincial town (Bergamo), when arrives Guido, a gangster (Corrado Pani, Interrabang), seeking for "a bit of fresh air" after tough fights. She falls under the charm of the bad boy with a smart sport car, whom male glance quickly captives her hunted doe eyes, and as he "can do whatever he likes with her", he brings her to the big city (Milan) to lead the bright life of the mob. But there she has soon to prove her fidelity to the big boss (Richard Conte, The Godfather) by working as a luxury prostitute. Getting pregnant, she manages to flee in Rome while her violent lover is being arrested. Here she meets Lorenzo, a nice doctor (John Richardson, I corpi presentano tracce di violenza carnale), who cures her son, and they ineluctably fall in love.

Shall she be able to choose between life (Lorenzo) or death (Guido)? «What will be the real Anna like?» Wandering her states of mind among the dangerous games of the mafia, Edwige Fenech gorgeously performs in a sensitive role in which she stands for all the possible figures of a woman. The distribution, with a bunch of these solid Italian actors of the time, will help her to accomplish her destiny.

This film is really boring i watched it because of Edwige Fenech so i was not completely disappointed or any thing like that as it was still amusing watching her. Still though you'd be better watching some of the gialli she did with Sergio Martino than watching this one.

One interesting thing though, there is one scene where we see the interior of the doctor's bedroom and in it he has hanging on the wall a poster of Angela Davis. Pretty nice.

Terrible English language title but what do you do if you have the delectable Edwige Fenech featuring in a fairly ordinary gangster movie, in which she strips several times - to great effect? The film actually begins well and it is a surprise just how violent is her mobster lover towards her. Beginning with real passion and some swirling and effective film-making it is rather a shame that the last section has to rely upon the dubious interest of her and her child and her doctor lover. Nevertheless the shootings at the very end are impressive and surprising and there can be little mistake that this is 70's film drama Italian style with all the mixed emotions that was bound to stir up.

Although director Giuliano Carnimeo and European sex symbol Edwige Fenech had teamed up to make one of the pulpiest Italian thrillers of all time, "The Case of the Bloody Iris," in 1972, their next collaboration, 1973's "Secrets of a Call Girl," is hardly a giallo at all. Rather, I would categorize it more as a romantic crime melodrama, in which Edwige gets to show that she's more than just a pretty face (oops...I guess I'm damning with faint praise; make that "incredibly beautiful face"). Her role here as Anna, an innocent coffee shop cashier who falls for the brutish charms of a Mafia thug, really gives her a chance to show the world what all the giallo fans knew before: that she is also an intelligent, subtle and highly skilled actress, as well. Her Anna is soon forced by the Mob to run drugs and turn tricks, but amazingly, she retains her stunning looks even after repeated beatings from her man Guido. Anyway, this film is extremely fast moving (almost too much so for its own good), covering a lot of ground in just 95 minutes, and ultimately gets a tad soapy in its final 1/3, when Anna gets involved with the surgeon who saves her son's life. Carnimeo's direction is surprisingly flashier here than in his previous giallo effort, and composer Luciano Michelini's lovely title tune should have become a standard on the order of "Doctor Zhivago"'s "Lara's Theme." Another treat for me in this film is the presence of one of my favorite actors, Richard Conte, here playing another Don Barzini-type role as the Mafia headman. Whotta class act! My heartiest thanks again to the fine folks at No Shame for another great DVD of a lost Italian classic, with nice subtitling and interesting extras. Keep 'em coming, guys!