L'emprise des sens

Anna (Edwige Fenech, Perché quelle strane gocce di sangue sul corpo di Jennifer, excellent giallo from the same), is a young pub cashier in a small asleep provincial town (Bergamo), when arrives Guido, a gangster (Corrado Pani, Interrabang), seeking for "a bit of fresh air" after tough fights. She falls under the charm of the bad boy with a smart sport car, whom male glance quickly captives her hunted doe eyes, and as he "can do whatever he likes with her", he brings her to the big city (Milan) to lead the bright life of the mob. But there she has soon to prove her fidelity to the big boss (Richard Conte, The Godfather) by working as a luxury prostitute. Getting pregnant, she manages to flee in Rome while her violent lover is being arrested. Here she meets Lorenzo, a nice doctor (John Richardson, I corpi presentano tracce di violenza carnale), who cures her son, and they ineluctably fall in love.

Shall she be able to choose between life (Lorenzo) or death (Guido)? «What will be the real Anna like?» Wandering her states of mind among the dangerous games of the mafia, Edwige Fenech gorgeously performs in a sensitive role in which she stands for all the possible figures of a woman. The distribution, with a bunch of these solid Italian actors of the time, will help her to accomplish her destiny.

Terrible English language title but what do you do if you have the delectable Edwige Fenech featuring in a fairly ordinary gangster movie, in which she strips several times - to great effect? The film actually begins well and it is a surprise just how violent is her mobster lover towards her. Beginning with real passion and some swirling and effective film-making it is rather a shame that the last section has to rely upon the dubious interest of her and her child and her doctor lover. Nevertheless the shootings at the very end are impressive and surprising and there can be little mistake that this is 70's film drama Italian style with all the mixed emotions that was bound to stir up.

SECRETS OF A CALL GIRL is an odd little Italian drama, playing out in part as a Eurocrime movie complete with Richard Conte as a mafia boss. However, for most of the running time this is a slow-moving character drama involving Edwige Fenech's unlucky in love girl, who falls in with a real creep of a character before finding love elsewhere - but is it too late? Drug smuggling and prostitution are the order of the day here, none of it particularly appealing, and as usual the only thing they know to do with Fenech is make her strip. The ending is unique, I'll give it that.

Secrets of a Call Girl is a rather odd Italian crime film as instead of focusing on the usual areas - shootings, car chases, fist fights etc, we focus on the hard done to girlfriend of a mobster; Anna, played by Edwige Fenech. The film is, therefore, is something like a cross between a crime drama and a romantic drama and in my opinion, it doesn't quite gel together - but that's not to say that this isn't a good film. The title implies that this will be a 'confessional' drama and implies that the central character is a prostitute, though that is somewhat misleading. As mentioned, the plot focuses on Anna; a young girl who works in a café. She goes from rags to riches when she catches the eye of Guido; an Italian mobster who takes her out of the café and into the gangster life. She soon realises that all that glitters is not gold when she witnesses a mob hit and the boss wants her silenced. Guido then decides to push her into prostitution, but when he is caught by the law; she decides to escape him and makes a new life with her son and a doctor.

Edwige Fenech takes the lead role and does brilliantly with it. Her role here requires her to a little more than just take her clothes off, and she rises to the occasion well. It's easy to forget that she can act considering her roles in many of her films, so Secrets of a Call Girl serves as a nice reminder! The film also features performances from Corrado Pani, Richard Conte and John Richardson, who all do a good job in supporting roles. Giuliano Carnimeo takes the directors chair and does a good of directing Fenech for the second time, after The Case of the Bloody Iris. It has to be said that this film is more than a little slow at times, especially compared to other similar genre films owing to the fact that the focus is more on Fenech's character rather than the mob activities. However, this is not always a bad thing. I can't say that I'm a big fan of Romance films, but Fenech does enough to light up the screen every time she's on it and the film never becomes boring. It all boils down to a powerful ending that actually does have an impact. Overall, I'm not crazy about this film; but it's a good entry into Fenech's resume and it gets my recommendation.

This film is really boring i watched it because of Edwige Fenech so i was not completely disappointed or any thing like that as it was still amusing watching her. Still though you'd be better watching some of the gialli she did with Sergio Martino than watching this one.

One interesting thing though, there is one scene where we see the interior of the doctor's bedroom and in it he has hanging on the wall a poster of Angela Davis. Pretty nice.