Lady Libertine

My review was written in July 1984 after watching the movie on a VHS screener copy.

"'Frank' and I" is a rather flat (no pun intended) rendering of Victorian era romantic porno, funded by and recently broadcast by the Playboy channel and currently playing theatrically in France (via Eurogroup Films distribbery) under a title translating as "Liberated Lady".

Screenplay by exec producer Harry Alan Towers (using his nom de film Peter Welbeck) will be familiar to 1960s readers of "The Pearl" or other traditional erotica published by Grove Press, presenting a romantic tale of a young woman's adventures with inevitable "birchings" and other disciplining punctuating the usual softcore sex couplings.

A British writer, Charles Beaumont (Christopher Pearson), narrates the story as recollections, detailing his romance with a 16-year-old girl (Jennifer Inch), taken into his household as a wastrel he met on the road disguised as a boy named Frank. "Frank" is in fact Frances, sent to London after her parents died in Canada, to stay with a Mrs. Leslie (April Hyde). Leslie turns out to be running a brothel, forcing young girls to work as her prostitutes, and Frances escaped, cutting her blonde hair short and dressing as a boy.

In Beaumont's care, "Frank"'s masquerade is quickly discarded and the young woman is initiated into more adult behavior by Beaumont's prior girlfriend (planning to marry another man), Maude (Sophie Favier). Various minor adventures, including Beaumont beating Mrs. Leslie as punishment for her having mistreated "Frank", lead to duo finally getting married and living happily ever after Diminutive Jennifer Inch combines a childlike face with a very well-developed figure in the central role, but her acting is unimpressive, not helped by post-synched English dialog. Production values are low budget, with two European tours by Beaumont presente as still photos only.

The first 40 mins was very strange to watch, it's of it's time period when it was filmed. The dialog and sex scenes were a bit awkward to watch at times. However, it did get interesting in the last half hour, these areas of the storyline have potential. It could be adapted really well into a modern mini series/ film, (with less of the stranger interactions/acting and more development on the relationships between all characters). We see depth in the woman's background but not much for either of the protagonists personalities until the last 15 mins.

I wish more of the story was developed through the writing and cinematography, like perhaps what the servants thought of them, and what resulted of the second love interest.

The softcore sex film basically began in 1974 with Just Jaeckin's "Emmanuelle" and was intended to be a "classier" alternative to the hardcore XXX porn initiated by "Deep Throat" and its ilk (as opposed to the "sexploitation" film which are sex films that existed BEFORE hardcore porn was really legal). The original, mostly European softcore films of the 70's are often quite interesting, although it's questionable how "classy" some of them are (that's definitely not a word that applies to Joe D'Amato's appalling "Emanuelle in America" or even the big-budget but tasteless film "Caligula"). Like the sexploitation films before them, a number of softcore sex films were loosely based on erotic novels (some call them "one-handed novels") from the Victorian Era, a famously sexually repressive era that not surprisingly produced a whole lot of smut, but also ironically provided a veneer of "respectability" for a whole lot of later sex films.

This gender-bender softcore effort is based on the Victorian novel "Frank and I" about a nobleman who meets an orphaned schoolboy on the road and, for some reason, decides to "adopt" him and bring him up properly. But while administering a bare-ass whipping, he discovers a secret, which pretty much any viewer of this movie would have figured out a half hour earlier (trust me, this is NOT a spoiler). "Frank" is actually "Frances" and is played by Jennifer Inch, an elfin but relatively busty Canadian actress. After this discovery the movie is just a typical sex romp involving the nobleman, "Frances", and his alluring mistress (played by French actress Sophie Favier).

This movie came out in the early 80's era along with such films as "Joy", "Christina", and "Fanny Hill". Like a couple of those films it was written and produced by the notorious Harry Alan Towers. The 80's softcore films are generally less interesting than the 70's ones (but far, far more interesting than the worthless masturbation fodder they make today). I'd give this one points just for being warped, but really it plays things pretty safe, truth be told. The Italian film "The Seduction of Angela" used this same plot, but had the nobleman find out the secret when he tries to bugger the good-looking "boy" (although the actress in that looked a lot more like Sophia Loren than any "boy"). Intentionally or not, this movie retains some Victorian-era hypocrisy by making a potential gay pederast into a typical hetero stud. There are definitely some mixed messages here. . .

So this is just Victorian era soft pawn.

Modern feminists must be beside themselves when watching movies like this.

However, some aspects of the movie bear closer inspection. Firstly, the start is quite a strange one as the man is 'strangely attracted' to the young boy and is even more attracted at the prospect of caning her for disobedience. Right there you have vague homosexual feeling coupled with an interest in sadism.

Toward the end, we have more caning scenes, visits to brothels and, on reflection, a very young lead actress.

The sets are good as are the costumes, but this is badly acted softcore stuff.

One of the many anonymous 'erotic' novels of the Victorian age, 'Frank and I' comes to the screen courtesy of Gérard Kikoïne, with Christopher Pearson and Jennifer Inch essaying the main roles of master and servant. It doesn't quite come off, mainly because of the appalling acting of the androgynous Inch as Frank (or is it Frances?), with her baby girl voice and plain-Jane face. It doesn't help either that the main focus of the book (the submission-domination angle) is squished into one scene which fails to be really convincing.

The trailer for the film manages to be better than the main feature itself, and that's no mean feat. The Victorians knew how to write this sort of thing, but it doesn't necessarily mean that 20th century film-makers know how to portray it on the screen. 'Frank and I' manages to be quite limp, miserably shot and woefully scripted. Not one I'd particularly recommend.