O Bordel de Paprika

Tinto Brass has made some things worth watching in my mind. He chooses to make erotic films, which is fine by me.

I'm interested in erotic films. Naturally, they are enjoyable, the good ones that avoid the damages associated with porn. But they are something deep in us too, something having to do with performance.

In a real erotic film, you'll have an actress (at the very least an actress) who is performing as a character who is performing for us. In porn, there is no difference; in erotic art, there is. Tinto in his better works understands this, and plays with it — sometimes — in effective ways.

This film is worse in the way it works, and is better in how the story bends to the purpose. The story is about another layer of performing. Our heroine not only performs for our pleasure, but for also (as a prostitute) for a seemingly endless series of men.

So the setup is fine.

Making something that is erotic requires that the artist in charge decide what is erotic. Now that's a matter purely of style and not art. The choices he's made this time are different than the ones he's known for, though they seem superficially similar. But this woman is genuinely fat, thickwaisted. She has bad teeth and (the only thing that really matters) she carries herself gracelessly.

You'll want to pass on this one, I think.

Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.

Most people watch Paprika for the softcore erotica or Tinto Brass's signature visual flair, but there's more going on under the surface. If you listen closely, Mimma says she's from Pola/Pula, in Istria (Yugoslavia, now Croatia). That's not a throwaway detail. By the 1950s, that area was no longer part of Italy, and most Italians had already left. So Mimma might not even be ethnically Italian.

Then she's given the nickname "Paprika." Not an Italian word. It's Slavic-coded, tied to a Central European / Hungarian dish. Together, these details frame her as not just a naïve girl from the countryside, but as someone even more foreign. Rural, backward, sexually uninhibited. It plays into racialized and exoticized stereotypes that are easy to miss unless you know the region's history.

Mimma's transformation into Paprika isn't just about becoming a sex worker. It's about becoming the other. Visually and narratively. Whether Tinto Brass meant this as a critique or simply leaned into the trope is unclear. But the trope is there, and it's worth thinking about.

That said, what's powerful about Paprika is that it doesn't just show off the morals of the 1950s. Watching it more than 30 years after it was made, you also see the 1990s all over it. The film critiques postwar sexual repression, but it does it through a 90s lens that often romanticized and objectified women from "the East." You can read it as a double mirror. One looking at how women's sexuality was policed, the other reflecting how "foreignness" was framed as either a threat or a fetish.

My review was written in May 1991 after a Cannes Film Festival Market screenng.

Tinto Brass' "Paprika" is a failed attempt at Italian sex comedy. The maestro's patented "Caligula" brand of gross-out is here in abundance, but where are the laughs?

Fim introduces yet another zaftig Italian actress, Debra Caprioglio. As he did five years ago with Serena Grandi in the erotic hit "Miranda", Brass the talent scout has given Capriolglio an awesome undraped showcase that should win her repeat appearances in similar roles.

Caprioglio plays Mimma, an 18-year-old beauty from Pola who goes to work for 15 days in a brothel to earn money for her boyfriend. He turns out to be two-timing her, so she stays on in Madame Colette's establishment with a new name, Paprika.

Episodic feature set in the 1950s, way too long at nearly two hours, presents in amoral fashon the cheerful lass' misadventures as she's initiated into a world of libertines, much like the heroine of a Victorian porn novel. She takes up with a violent pimp, moves to brothels in Rome and Milan, and occasionally gets gigs at private parties.

Vulgar and sexist, "Paprika" hits its low pint when hammy guest star John Steiner (as an aristocrat) invites the heroine and another prostitute to his mansion for some water sports. Brass had a similar scene in "Miranda", but here he outdoes that one for tastelessness.

Ulitmately, Paprika marries a rich count, making for a happy ending that rings false. Brass' attempt to add social significance, pinning the story's climax to a law banning brothels in Italy, is lame.

Capriglio's infectons smile an laugh bely the indigniteis she's put through here. While not hardcore pornongrapy, Brass' highly explicit closeups and the Steiner episode make "Paprika" strictly NC-17 material.

Longtime Brass collaborator Silvano Ippoliti has attractively lit colorful art deco sets, but Brass' editing is atrocious. Riz Ortolani's period score is jaunty no matter how violent the action gets, and Brass has the gall to include classic songs by Edditgh P:iaf and Leo Ferre during sex scenes.

Loosely based on John Cleland's 1748 classic novel Fanny Hill this Italian adaptation celebrates lead actress Debora Caprioglio at her peak. Set in the 50s, Debora.plays Mimma a lovestruck girl who takes up escorting to support her backstabbing fiance. Over time she learns the truth and begins her journey as a courtesan and companion.

The movie does have a plot that traces the adventures of a young prostitute. But do people really watch and rewatch this movie for its plot? I doubt it very much! The main reason to watch this movie is young Deborah Caprioglio, photographed from every angle at the peak of her voluptuous beauty. She is breathtakingly beautiful, and Tinto Brass's light-hearted eroticism found its most memorable protagonist. The actress continues to make movies, but nothing measures up to the visual impact of this film.