Claude et Greta

"Because Paris is Paris," Swedish art history student Astrid Frank thumbs her way to the City of Lights with nothing more on her shoulders than a guitar case and a pair of blonde braids. When her friendliness is interpreted by a series of sexual predators as an open invitation to Swedish "free love," Greta retreats into a lesbian relationship with the affluent but lonely Nicole Debonne – but eventually tires of the older woman's possessiveness ("It disgusts me!") and sets her sights on the boytoy (Frederic Sakiss) of a celebrated gay painter (Yves Vincent) – with calamitous results.

Because CLAUDE ET GRETA (filmed as LES LIAISONS PARTICULIÈRES, it opened in Paris in 1970 as CLAUDE ET GRETA, but is now available on video as HER AND SHE AND HIM) was distributed by Radley Metzger, it begs comparison to a Radley Metzger production. Although director Max Pécas displays a painterly eye and occasional erotic gusto, his characters lack the depth that Metzger reliably brought to both his high living and lowdown sensualists. Worse yet, his script (co-written with Michel Ressi) depicts its homosexual characters as neurotic and borderline psychotic, while the two young innately hetero lovebirds are etched as innocents turned away from their destiny at the altar by the decadent allure of same sex relationships. Despite the abundant nudity and X-rated insert shots, CLAUDE ET GRETA doesn't advance any thinking that would be out of place in a Sunday sermon.

Rent THE LICKERISH QUARTET instead.

I was at a video rental shop that specializes in foreign and hard to find films. This one was under the erotica section with all the other 60s and 70s sex films of that era. I found the cover to be intriguing and the brief out-line of the story interesting enough that I wound up renting it. What a mistake that was. This movie is beyond bad. Worse yet, the entire film is dubbed. The story revolves around Greta, a young Swedish girl who comes to Paris in hopes of stardom and a new life. She has only her beauty and guitar as she becomes entangled in a series of un-wanted sexual advances. She eventually winds up living with and having a relationship with an older, woman, Claude who lusts after her. The rest of the films depicts Greta wanting to leave the clutches of this woman who, in a short period of time becomes possessive of her. Greta later meets up with and becomes involved with Jean, a painter's assistant who also happen to be in a torrid gay love affair. I found there wasn't enough character development and that the gay and lesbian characters in the film were portrayed as mentally un-balanced, obsessive and just down right crazy. Their erratic behaviour and the lengths that these two characters went through ie. conspiracy to murder in order to prevent Greta and Jean from being together. If anything, I felt no empathy for Jean or Greta who throughout this film behaved like a couple of love-sick, innocent teenagers who could do no wrong. A waste of time.