Mulher, Mulher

This little Brazilian production of 1979 is quite a good movie. The photography is simple and so does the sound track, with good instrumental music. The actors seem to be dubbed in studio, which guarantees a good sound, however sometimes it is out of sync with the image.

Besides technical imperfections, the plot is very interesting. Alice (Helena Ramos) is a recent widow, married to a psychiatrist interested in sexual issues of the mind. She finds his audio tapes and listen to it, which contains some psychiatrist sessions recorded. She is strongly influenced by the recordings and start doing things just like her husband's patients.

It has some hot erotic scenes, as any other Brazilian movie of that time. Helena has a stunning body, very natural, different than the actual pornographic women, who have an artificial shape. There are two controversial scenes with a horse, what rose polemics at the time of the release. But notice that it is not only a sexual relation with the horse, she really loves the horse Jumbo, and is jealous about this relationship. She said in an interview that the trick to the horse lick her, was pouring a mint cream over her body.

The drama of her sexual psyche is very thrilling and is the high point of the movie, like the erotic (not pornographic) scenes. There are also some poetic scenes, very beautiful and surprising, and I didn't expect it.

It's a good movie, 7 out of 10.

It shows often in "Channel Brasil" and is sold in the internet (a pirate copy).

I've become a big fan of Brazilian "pornochachada"--films that are half softcore porn and half deranged soap operas with all kinds of perverse elements and obscurely Brazilian polemics thrown in. Unfortunately, I have run out of "chadas" that are subtitled in English, so I had to watch this one in unsubtitled Portugese. I'll therefore defer to the previous reviewer as far as any plot points go.

This film might have come a little early to be considered a "pornochachada" (which are more associated with the 1980's), but it certainly greatly resembles one, and the voluptuous Helena Ramos was a fixture of the genre ("Violence and Flesh", "The Chick's Ability"). The off-the-wall plot of a lonely wife listening to her absent psychiatrist husband's sexual research tapes and being "inspired" by them sounds like a typical contrived porno scenario. And this certainly contains plenty of sex scenes as Ramos sleeps with a couple men, goes skinny-dipping and has lesbian sex with her beautiful bisexual female neighbor, services her studly Afro servant, and most perversely lets her beloved horse lick sugar off her nude body! But compared to a porno film the sex scenes are actually kind of brief and mixed in with all kinds of absurd dramatic turns and numerous longeurs of horse-back riding and disco dancing. Ramos gives a truly unhinged psychosexual performance that would frankly be way beyond the talents of your average porn actress (especially today). The most amazing scene is when she goes in the stall and starts brutally whipping her horse for no apparent reason. Her black servant tries to stop her so she whips HIM into a bloody mess. Then she strips of her clothes and has sex with him--while periodically slapping him in the face--until the whole thing culminates in a literal screaming orgasm. It's a pretty hot scene no doubt, and the sexual polemics are interesting to say the least.

I'm personally leery about making a distinction between porn and pseudo-classy "erotica", but the problem with porn is that it often degenerates into interminable scenes of mechanical copulation with absolutely nothing else of interest. That is definitely NOT true of this movie (or of pornochachada in general). I'd liken your average porn movie to a big bowl of salt, while this movie, while definitely salty, has a lot of other spices thrown in and is actually a pretty substantial--and definitely pretty tasty--dish.