Symphonie érotique

Sinfonía erótica (1980) *** (out of 4)

Martine de Bressac (Lina Romay) is returning home after a stay in a mental hospital. Once there she is told that her husband is having an affair with a young man. Soon the two men are out walking in the woods when they come across a young nun (Susan Hemingway) who has been raped. Before long Martine is slipping more into a mental state while the other three are planning her murder.

I've seen over a hundred and fifty films from Spanish director Jess Franco and he's made some great ones and some truly awful ones. Out of all of the films I've seen I'd say that SINFORNIA EROTICA takes the number one spot for his most underrated. If you're expecting sleaze, nudity, sex and violence then you're really not going to get that from this film. While the movie does contain some of that there's no question that this here is an art film and a well-made on at that.

Slightly based on a Marquis de Sade story, the film manages to really come across as a nightmare. Franco's direction is certianly among the best of his career as he does a great job at really painting a woman's mental breakdown and the craziness that surrounds her. The film's cinematography really does a great job with its soft focus to show what a nightmare the lead character is going through. I thought the cinematography really managed to build up a bizarre fever-dream like vision that helped draw you into the picture.

The film also benefits from some nice performances as well. This includes Romay who doesn't get a lot of dialogue and instead must act just with her eyes. I really thought this was one of her best roles and one of her finest performances. She's basically got to just act with her eyes and what's going on in her troubled mind and I thought the actress was quite believable. Hemingway, who appeared in a handful of films for Franco, has always been one of my favorite actresses of his and she too is extremely good in her role. Both Armando Borges and Mel Rodrigo are good as well.

As I said, the film contains some nudity and sex as well as some violence but it's off the screen. The film really doesn't go for any sort of sleaze and that's why some people might be bored by it. That's really too bad because it's certainly a well-made movie and one of the better ones that Franco made.

If you're a fan of the late Spanish horror/porn director Jesus Franco, you could certainly do worse than this 1980 outing, which is--like much of the director's more interesting sex films--based on a story by the Marquis De Sade. A young noblewoman (Lina Romay) is released from an asylum and returns to her isolated castle where she finds her sexually depraved husband has taken up with both a pretty-boy male gigolo and a libertine, runaway novice nun (Susan Hemingway). What follows is a slowly developing murder plot interrupted by no small amount of sex.

I enjoy Franco most when he's indulging in polymorphous perversion like he does here--you have bondage, nunsploitation, gay sex, a "Devil's three-way" (two guys and a girl), and a couple impaled while having sex. This is truly an "erotic symphony" as Franco plays the bodies of his assorted cast like instruments (and scores the whole thing with classical music) making the actual plot more of secondary consideration.

Of course, Franco can't keep his camera off the vaginas of his two actresses, but at least he doesn't try to zoom his way back into the womb like he tends to in some movies. He gets a lot of mileage out of his wife/leading lady's bounteous breasts, but he tragically neglects the beautiful post-adolescent posterior of Susan Hemingway, which COULD have finally been enjoyed without guilt here as she had reached the age of majority by this time. (Pervert that he was though, Franco would trade her for the even younger Katja Beinert in his subsequent early 80's films). The gay sex scene is not particularly graphic, but unusual for Franco. Whether you like it or not, you have to admire the sheer variety of sex on display, particularly given how complete compartmentalized and commodified sex films are TODAY. There will never be another one like Jess Franco. . .