Andrée ou Andréa

The rigorously distracting, beguilingly decadent, scintillatingly sensual, 'Andrea The Nympho' actively remains one of the more appealingly skin-drenched, candlelight languid shunt-fests of the sin-slinging 60s! Trawling through the not always edifying murk of Euro-cult ephemera, one always desperately hopes to unearth another genuinely delicious example of voluptuous vintage eros, but, Hans Schott-Schöbinger's high-flying, fleshly fabulous, 'Andrea' is a rare bird indeed!

The pleasingly pulchritudinous premise is a rewardingly simple, yet profoundly engaging one! The exquisitely enticing, Andrea (Dagmar Lassander) generously spends the majority of Schöbinger's Cocktail Hour hump-a-thon in various states of undress, provocatively exposing her exotic, boudoir-happy philosophy of morally unencumbered free love! This appealingly man-baiting maxim translates into the tantalizing travails of our luxuriously lissome, lingerie-dropping protagonist, who uninhibitedly seduces all who willingly succumb to the luridly libidinous needs of her carnivorous cooch! 'Andrea The Nympho' aka 'Andrea - Wie ein Blatt auf nackter Haut' is a racily voyeuristic example of late 60s German sexploitation, funkily festooned with a finger-poppingly peachy jazz-funk score by the marvellously monikered, Hans Hammerschmidt! Hans is a stone groove, man, and he really delivers the gritty go-go Martini grooves, replete with sleazoid, hepcat drum breaks, and myriad, bouncy, bad ass keys. Even maestro, Gert Wilden 'aint got nothing' on onkle Hans!

I set out to watch this, rather expecting a fairly mundane sex film and being West German, a weak comedy as well, but Dagmar Lassander was the draw. Wow! Was I in for a surprise for although the story is nothing special, there are some wonderful scenes and three in particular, most striking. One is a mysterious chase through a reed bed, the anxiety and splashing reminiscent of a Japanese movie, a vigorous scene with some pimp who picks her up and a glorious and surreal sequence when she lays back upon a gravestone. There is much voice over by the main character, probably not Lassander in my dubbed version, with much reference to her position and rights within society, all very much in tune with the times. Because I had trouble starting my DVD, I unknowingly started watching after the titles and opening scene and upon finishing went back to see what I had missed. Unfortunately the film is bookended in a rather corny manner and would have been much better without it. Never mind, Lassander is great throughout and this is altogether a well shot and most good looking film.