L'amour à cheval

If you can suspend your judgement a bit, and not hold this film/story to current-day "morality", this film can be a very enjoyable experience. Watching Catherine Spaak explore and develop her personality and desires is fascinating, and Jean Louis Tritignan's love for her is evident. Interesting that the director cast two french lead actors for an italian film - I wonder why that is. The sets are gorgeous and interesting, the cinematography by Alfio Contini is splendid.

There is a region B (Europe) bluray version available, and it is such high quality that this could have been filmed in the past few years.

Also available is a remastered 2022 version of the soundtrack by Armando Trovajoli at bandcamp - search for "bandcamp La Matriarca soundtrack".

It's many versions of the same theme tune "l'amore dice ciao", and is a lovely atmosphere album. I wonder if any other films have used the same single song to provide the soundtrack for the whole film.

A difficult film to write about because it is so much one of a kind and that it is so much of a certain time and because it has become more problematic recently to be free to separate the notions of sexual fantasy and desire from abuse. Director Pasquale Festa Campanile had a modest film career tending to specialise in Italian sex comedies and is more renowned for his screenwriting, particularly for his work in the early 60s. He did direct the notorious Hitch-Hike (1977) ,however, with Franco Nero and Corinne Cleary and the little seen Check to the Queen (1969) one of my personal faves that has something of the look and certainly shares the BDSM element with the film under discussion. Here a young (although already veteran of some dozen films) Catherine Spaak stars to devastating affect, looking ravishing throughout. But then everything looks pretty good, the set and costume designs are fantastic and there is barely a shot that does not make you gasp and the beauty or audacity. The music of Armando Trovajoli also helps enormously with its constant twinkling delights and sexy sounds. Our young widow peers into the secret past of her late husband and the more strange and awful and bad and taboo his apparent exploits appear the more she is intrigued to have a go herself. The extent to which she indulges and is seen to enjoy those elements of sex and violence is viewed as problematic today but in the late sixties was seen by many as all part of life's rich experience just waiting to be explored. Leaving the sexual politics aside this can be seen as a wondrous garden of delights, clearly influenced by the previous year's masterpiece from Luis Bunuel, and somehow managing to treat the subject more seriously, in that it is proffered as a solution for our heroine but at the same time more frivolously in the way there is all the time a more candy floss look and feel to the proceedings. Good fun for the broadminded though.

A pampered young widow (Catherine Spaak) discovers that her deceased husband was a pervert after finding his secret penthouse and stash of stag films (which strangely seem to be professionally shot and edited). She decides to get post-humous revenge on him by embarking on a series of perverse sexual escapades of her own. She buys a copy of Freud's "Psychpathis Sexualis" (I don't know why she doesn't start with "The Joy of Sex" or something and work her way up) and experiments with an number of strange, but relatively harmless, perversions before finding true love with her chiropractor (Jean Sorel).

Some may find this movie pretty slow and lacking in both sex and nudity. It has some really ridiculous dialogue (or rather monologue--as the lead seems to constantly talk to herself in voice-over or out loud). It seems pretty innocent by today's standards, but it also has startlingly cavalier attitude toward sexual promiscuity. And some of the passages the heroine reads in voice-over from her book (such as the account of a sexual sadist who bites off his partner's nose during sex) are quite jarring compared to the silly and much more wholesome things she actually does. Still I liked this film for it's odd combination of sex and the 60's-era nostalgia you feel watching it today. Catherine Spaak is unbelievably cute and naturally sexy in a way that woman just aren't anymore in the modern world of breast implants and 24-hour-a-day fitness centers. The final image of her nearly naked and in sexual ecstasy as she (literally) rides her boyfriend around the penthouse apartment is very memorable.

Pasquale Campanile was also a pretty damn good director who years later would helm the memorable giallo "Hitchhike". He and his fellow countryman Massimo "Venus in Furs" Dallamano actually might have done "Eurotica" better than more famous European directors like Jesus Franco, Jean Rollins, and Jose Larraz, but they are much less internationally renowned today, probably because their work never crossed into the horror and fantasy genres. It's very worthy stuff, nevertheless--seek it out.

This is a charming, saucy and insanely amusing little film, featuring Catherine Spaak and assorted body doubles in such generous amounts of body, only a hater of physical beauty won't be charmed. Possibly to death.

Note; whatever you do, buy the VHS. Not only is the DVD a bust – no pun, please, but many of Ms. Spaak's more revealing and best, (and I MEAN revealing) moments, have been edited out. (Le recul, le chéri de Catherine ?) These included a nice shot for posterity, of Cat's um, posterior as well as a – well full-frontal surprise this delectable Belgian hottie plays on a school teacher. Not to mention that color separation and poor film stock issues are actually exacerbated on the DVD. There is really nothing to recommend it- except that most won't watch VHS any more. (The DVD does have a few cute outtakes, but my God, we're talking a gorgeous woman, like no other, who plays horsie at great length in the film; surely THAT footage should have been the source of any outtakes.)

The film and its incessantly catchy theme commenced … and we find our girl Spaak at her husband's funeral. Far from remorseful, Spaak's 'Mimi' says of his death, she feels 'nothing.' But soon, SOON, dear viewer, she'll feel SOMETHING and in a big way and often!

While as fluffy as a Roman Cloud in May, this movie is cited for having a few underlying themes of the 'eat drink and be merry for tomorrow…,' as well as 'know thy woman or else' type. Perhaps, perhaps not. Doesn't matter. The film is hysterical and very much like the music of the Smiths – if anyone else tried this stuff, it would be a disaster; in their capable hands, a delight. … Even if Rome has few clouds of any kind in May …

Freed from a husband for whom sexually, Mimi never responded, she proceeds to go on a tear, of – if memory serves, 8 count em' eight, men in a row, not to mention an apparent orgy where God knows what the score may have been.

It happens that Spaak's deceased had a play pen in Rome, a hideaway where the latter took his gals, including Spaak's best friend. Spaak learns of this piede e terre through her attorney whom she then beds. She then goes through the roll call: dentist, tennis pro, john, (a guy who thinks she's a prostitute) sadist, (truly regrettable, but very much of the times and a reminder one hopes, of what's NOT acceptable any longer), plumber, (not just 'any plumber' but in fact, her maid's husband) and finally, doctor. Not to mention whatever is going on in the orgy scene, which is actually another film; the orgy occurs in a movie that Catherine plays to the doctor to try and dissuade him from proposing marriage.

Nothing doing. This doctor is no fool. He hangs in there and is not put off by her scandalous behavior. Even excites him within the context of, 'family life.'

Amusingly, from the earliest scenes, Mimi is shown boning up on various abnormal sexuality tomes. … One of which suggests that Aristotle became aroused through the act of playing horse, or as translated from Italian, 'Ride a cock horse.' Therein lies the films resolution. Owing to a sprained ankle recently suffered, Mimi asks the doctor to carry her. A few unforgettable scenes later and the two are saying how boring their wedding was and Spaak proceeds to ride her new beau into a boundless matrimonial bliss. Obviously, this cat catered to her thing, which of course resolved all her long-held inhibitions, etc. You get it.

With this flick, Ridley Scott directed a wonderful, charming witty and above all, genuinely hilarious film, if very much, of its time. Me thinks Catherine Spaak's role could not have been performed by any other, as it is her ability as a comedienne and of course her incredible (and highly unusual) beauty - and other bits - that make this so special. Why, that gal Spaak has more 'it' than the top leading ladies of today, rolled together! As to WHY Ridley Scott used such terrible film stock, you'd have to ask him.

A MUST SEE for laughs and when you just need a shot of pure unadulterated sexuality, the real deal, not some creature from a West Hollywood surgeon who left some poor girl's best parts on the cutting room floor.

Summer 2004 *Also know as La Matriarca.

Very cute and erotic movie made in 1969! ;-) I found it on Netflix and was intrigued. The movie has all the stylish glamour of the 60s with lots of sex!

Young widow uses dead husband's bachelor apt for sexual exploration. She sleeps around and ends up falling in love.

Lots of a nakedness and laughs! I'd recommend it!