Giulia

Feminine movie of the month in the magazine Hot Video - April, 2012. The first scene where Giulia, in the freshness of a Lolita, everything of white dressed, refuses himself to his professor is an appetizer for my wet lips. My "mouillomètre" reaches its highlight, my pussy swells when this no suspicious is engaged in a top-grade standard, in a loft so welcoming as the sex burning with this scamp. The movie also has very exciting lesbian scenes. Very elaborate, unique scenario in its kind a movie to be advised for all the women and the men interested in the poetic, sensual and committed porn. Magnificent movie has credit note necessarily in its collection of DVD, so much it is rare from part its design and its ideology.

As a movie-freak I get to see perhaps almost as many movies as an official critic and, like a critic, I am always looking for The One, the film that stands out from the (vast) crowd and makes you think you haven't wasted any precious time in the watching. But more than that, the one that makes you feel a sense of gain, moving forward in some way, in your thinking or even in your perception of certain things. Only master film makers can make you feel like this, from Tarantino to Eastwood, from Jackson to Spielberg. Then of course you have the rogue directors, the rebels against convention who want to show you something different, not just for different's sake but because they are themselves motivated and inspired by things most people haven't yet approached or experienced. Bergman was such a director, as were the great Italians, Pasolini, Visconti and Fellini, and still we have Bertolucci. Now I find a New Yorker turned Parisian, whose work calls to mind some of these Masters, but through an influence that is subtle enough for it to be subconscious rather than a heavy handed copying of style and technique. Roy Stuart is a new comer to film but by no means to photography - erotic photography - the medium in which he has established himself thoroughly as a Master, admired and collected by large numbers of fans throughout the world. That he has turned from still photography to the moving kind is to our gain, as although young at the medium, he uses it with an almost equal mastery that he uses his still camera, and I don't believe anyone seeing his first film, Giulia, will doubt that he will even surpass in film what successes he has achieved in the world of the erotic photographer. What Roy Stuart achieves - for me - in this first film is the remarkable quality of eroticism throughout, even when the subject before us is not apparently erotic at all….but it is, for him, and he passes that feeling on; it is for him present in the deepest Freudian sense, that is to say ever-present in all situations, in our very beings. And so after watching a work by Stuart one has the almost uncanny feeling that one has just been watching very close friends in their private moments…because what one has actually been watching is a glimpse into a part of oneself with which we haven't necessarily been too familiar before. All great films make us feel this in different ways or measures and we can now welcome Roy Stuart into the great arena of those who make us more aware - as well as entertaining us in the extreme.

Thanks to Roy Stuart for this film and the wonderful scene with Tina Aumont. Tina is as usual amazing and what she says is very close with her private history. In my "Waiting for Tina" biography I am glad to write about this scene and its particular atmosphere. "Rome unique objet de mon ressentiment", but not only. It was a town of freedom and experiments on the late sixties and the early seventies and some film producers like Tinto Brass proved it. In Giulia, the music goes perfectly with the picture and the four male characters shown in "Giulia" are a good vision of human being : sex addiction, alibi of faith and brain work, taste for lie, lack of social projects. Maybe it would have been interested to see the evolution of "Giulia" in a second time.

Jean Azarel

I swooned when I saw this. I almost wanted to go to France and find Anna Biella so that I could propose to her. This intensely moody experimental one-hour video begins with a French modern-dance class preparing to go to Rome, but Giulia is mysteriously singled out not to go on the field trip.

Dancing is only one of Giulia's ambitions. Rebelling against her religious-wacko sister Christine and their religious-wacko mom (Tina Aumont, who still looks gorgeous at the age of 50), Giulia aspires to be an actress. I so much admire kids who can talk back to their parents when they need to. She goes to an audition but discovers nothing more than a casting couch. After a few minutes of playing along, she scrams, but promises her casting director anything he wants the next night. The next night is the highlight, for this is when we witness Giulia moonlighting as a live-sex-act performer at a Parisian strip club. (No faking anything during this lengthy sequence. But no graphic close-ups either, thank goodness. I'm sure this was done in one take and with a real audience.) She invites her sleazy casting director to join her on stage, but in his jealousy and shock he chickens out and leaves. Now, here's my confession: When I was a teen, nudity and sex on film were a major turn-on. I'm no longer a teen, and nudity and sex, scripted and posed, no longer do anything for me at all. But then I saw this scene—and I melted.

There are various vignettes as Giulia walks through Paris, chats with a friend, pulverizes a pest in the park, attends a street festival, and so forth. I bet that some of these episodes were not staged, but were real events, shot as they happened. A good example of this is the bit with the Chaplin-like mime in the park, who may not have even known he was appearing in a professional video; he probably thought he was just in someone's home movie. And I bet that was a real night in a real discotheque too. Oh the lucky people who were there that night!

Turns out that Giulia wasn't invited to travel with her classmates because her jealous gay dance instructor Gustavo is having an affair with her sex-show partner Eric. She gets to Rome anyway. I imagine that the Vatican hierarchy blew their collective fuse when they found out what that cameraman used his footage for. But hey, what I love about the Italians is that they're not Catholic.

WARNING: Don't watch this just before bedtime. If you do (as I did), it will seriously mess with your dreams. And don't be fooled by the seemingly simplistic plot. This is as moody and as atmospheric as a movie can get. The wildly expressionistic editing alone would be enough to get under your skin. But on top of that is the music, composed by director Roy Stuart, which is genuinely haunting, and which is sung to perfection by Anna Biella (Giulia) and Alessandro Corsini (Gustavo).

In French and Italian with Italian subtitles. This is the only video I've ever seen that looks more effective and compelling and moody than film. So much for that elusive "film look." Jesus was a vegetarian? Aggressive Hawaiians? Planned animal?OH GOD I LOVE THIS MOVIE!"

Fans of Roy Stuart's still photography will be delighted by this film. It is a treat to watch the gritty sexuality and dramatic lighting of his books come to life on the screen. As with Stuart's photo work, keen actors and unencumbered production lend a feeling of authenticity.

The best part of this film is how it swept me into Giulia's search for identity- and gratification. She and her partners become entangled by emotions of lust, jealousy and gratification and I could not help but to empathize with the characters, sometimes in unexpected ways.

Anybody who admires Stuart's signature brand of eroticism will not be disappointed!