Gemidos de placer

Cries of Pleasure, from prolific Spanish sleaze-merchant Jess Franco, is mostly soft-core sex with very little story. If non-stop bumping and grinding is what you're after, complete with full frontal nudity from both sexes, then this is the film for you, but I would have liked a bit more plot to go with endless nookie, which I soon found rather tiresome.

The film stars Antonio Mayans as moustachioed stud Antonio, who has three women on the go: new acquaintance Julia (Lina Romay), lover Marta (Elisa Vela) and wife Martina (Rocío Freixas), who has just been released from an asylum. With help from Julia, Antonio plans to kill Martina for her money, but his newest conquest has made prior arrangements. Meanwhile, simpleton Fenul (Juan Soler) plucks his guitar as he watches the trio indulge in sex and sadistic debauchery.

Shot in a luxurious villa overlooking some spectacular scenery, Cries of Pleasure is one of Franco's better looking films, but it's also one of his most tedious, the numerous sex scenes becoming a boring blur of bums, boobs and bush. Occasionally, the action borders on the ridiculous, such as when a naked Julia arches her back and writhes in ecstasy on a sofa until Antonio and Martina come and give her something to moan about. And occasionally, it teeters on the brink of hardcore. But most of the time it's just really dull.

Franco's films are always cheap, quick, and easy- and yet the gorgeous cinematography always elevates them to the next level and makes them into art. Imagine if he actually put time and effort into creating an emotionally impactful story with good pacing. Anyway, his films always have a sense of absolute abandon and true passion to them that really allows you to get lost in them. You can tell they really believe in what they're doing, and even if it is a cheap movie they aren't just cash ins, they are his personal artistic vision- although that vision really is mainly about carnal pleasure and transgression. This one, like many of Franco's films, is based on a work by De Sade. I wish I knew which one, I enjoy De Sade and I think his works are funny, satirical, philosphical, gleeful in their transgression of social codes but biting in their wit and obvious in their playful nature. Much like Franco. These aren't works of cold, hard violence and torture. They're erotic works of humor that defy society and morality with violence and torture. And Sex. And that's different... in my opinion.

I wish there was a bit more plot here, as there's more sex scenes than there is scenes which advance the story, but maybe that's true to De Sade as well. Maybe not though, as De Sade's stories are usually littered with lengthy philosophical monologues.

That's not to say the plot is nonexistent, there is a plot and it's quite interesting, it's just that the majority of the movie doesn't actually involve it.

Anyway, an absolutely wonderful display of libertinage, elevated by decadent camerawork. Classic Jesus Franco.

Gemidos de Placer (1983)

** (out of 4)

Jess Franco directed this film about a man (Robert Foster) who invites a woman (Lina Romay) to live with him so that they can drive his wife crazy when she returns home from an asylum. Once again Franco bases a film on the work of Marquis de Sade but the end results aren't too good. I had to view the film in Spanish without any subs so perhaps a proper version will improve my thoughts but I found the story rather boring, the pacing off and the sex scenes were unerotic and came off laughable during some parts. I'm not sure what was up with Romay but she was quite skinny here, which normally wasn't the case in her 80's period.

As I said before--when you see name Jess Franco be ready for a treat. The guy had a lot of imagination and managed put most of them into illusions called movies. When I first saw his flick "Downtown" where he played detective I said to myself--this lousy looking guy should make minimum wages and sleep in shelter not having name Jess Franco. Unfortunately it was me who been making minimum wages and sleeping in shelter.