Giulia

Being a fan of the works of Tinto Brass the day would eventually come when I had to see "Giulia". I have read about this movie before, but against my will "Giulia" was the last one from 12 short movies from "Corti circuiti erotici" series (produced by T.Brass) that I happened to see. I started comparing "Giulia" with them all while watching, but somewhere on 20+ minute I realized that this movie stands alone. It is something more than "one of the 12". I was silent, I was in shock, I was amazed. "Oh, how beautiful this movie is! How lovely and again beautiful!". After that night "Giulia" was dominating in my thoughts for several days, and I decided to watch it again to see what does this movie want from me.

Strange thing happened then.... The middle of the movie (when I was "captured" for the previous time) and the second half passed without that emotional uplift I experienced for the first time. But this time I was noticing interesting camera work here and there! Some reviews say that camera work is.… well…. not that good. Maybe, I'm not a professional. But I liked it. Emotional aspect worked again (from the different angle though). Did I face another side of the experience of watching "Giulia"? How many layers does this movie have? What should come next? I am excited again and will watch it again and again.

Another fact, I believe, worth to be mentioned here to make for the movie. French portions of movie (most of it, in fact) are almost locked for my understanding, so I only got the idea of the action from movie itself and from all those reviews posted here and there. Nevertheless, I don't feel uncomfortable when watching, and the actors' play support my perception very well. So, am I speaking about feelings and emotions here again? Soundtrack, although with annoying stops in musical parts here and there, supports the movie in the best way. You're floating down the stream of movie when get in harmony with sounds – not only music, but voices.

Understanding this movie may be difficult, of course. Just like understanding women. Maybe one should not force himself or herself to understand it, but rather try to feel? And give another try later and see what comes then?

As a movie-freak I get to see perhaps almost as many movies as an official critic and, like a critic, I am always looking for The One, the film that stands out from the (vast) crowd and makes you think you haven't wasted any precious time in the watching. But more than that, the one that makes you feel a sense of gain, moving forward in some way, in your thinking or even in your perception of certain things. Only master film makers can make you feel like this, from Tarantino to Eastwood, from Jackson to Spielberg. Then of course you have the rogue directors, the rebels against convention who want to show you something different, not just for different's sake but because they are themselves motivated and inspired by things most people haven't yet approached or experienced. Bergman was such a director, as were the great Italians, Pasolini, Visconti and Fellini, and still we have Bertolucci. Now I find a New Yorker turned Parisian, whose work calls to mind some of these Masters, but through an influence that is subtle enough for it to be subconscious rather than a heavy handed copying of style and technique. Roy Stuart is a new comer to film but by no means to photography - erotic photography - the medium in which he has established himself thoroughly as a Master, admired and collected by large numbers of fans throughout the world. That he has turned from still photography to the moving kind is to our gain, as although young at the medium, he uses it with an almost equal mastery that he uses his still camera, and I don't believe anyone seeing his first film, Giulia, will doubt that he will even surpass in film what successes he has achieved in the world of the erotic photographer. What Roy Stuart achieves - for me - in this first film is the remarkable quality of eroticism throughout, even when the subject before us is not apparently erotic at all….but it is, for him, and he passes that feeling on; it is for him present in the deepest Freudian sense, that is to say ever-present in all situations, in our very beings. And so after watching a work by Stuart one has the almost uncanny feeling that one has just been watching very close friends in their private moments…because what one has actually been watching is a glimpse into a part of oneself with which we haven't necessarily been too familiar before. All great films make us feel this in different ways or measures and we can now welcome Roy Stuart into the great arena of those who make us more aware - as well as entertaining us in the extreme.

This will be a weird review. The movie we are discussing is not too many words worth but the one that came in the same bundle with it certainly is. To begin with, Giulia is a missed opportunity; a waste of great possibilities. Besides, Anna Biella seem to have shot herself in the foot taking part in this mess since her acting credits didn't improve very much after that, and that is a real pity. She is gorgeous to look at and seem to be a very talented actress. In addition to that, she's a real trooper accepting to participate in this short. All that opened a world of possibilities for a minimally talented director to make a hell of an erotic movie. Not so. In this case the movie is not only bad, it's incompetent, and that's worse than bad. The camera work and the editing are so abysmal that it's distracting. The sound stops arbitrarily in the middle of the scenes and the camera turns away suddenly as if we were looking at the unedited dailies. Not that there is too much to follow of the non-existent plot but at least they could have shown us what happens. I am a fierce advocate of crossover experiments with mainstream movies showing explicit sex, but the minimum requirement for that is that the experiment wouldn't be an embarrassment for any porn producer, as is the case here. A true waste.

But the blow came later. Together with Giulia there was a short film called "Sono Come Tu Mi Vuoi". "I am like you want me". My main curiosity was for Giulia and I begun to see the next thing with some skeptic disinterest. Little I knew. My greatest surprise was the performer. After a few sentences, I kind of notice that we were here not only dealing with a professional actress but an awesome one. I started to try to explain myself what was going on. Was the director a genius capable to stage the scene and write the text so good that anyone would look good in it? Probably, and this woman wouldn't be able to play anything else other that what was specially tailored for her… Was she lip synced by a great professional actress that gave her the powerful tones with which she was carrying a 25 minutes monologue with all of us glued to the screen? Sure, that must be. I tried to imagine what her real voice was and what kind of performance she would give without all that help. But I couldn't stay too long in those digressions because the lady brought me back again and again with her magic erotic spell. Well, I was dead wrong. The lady's name is Fiorella Rubino and she's a stage actress that has made her way from Richard III to Otello and tried this erotic experiment at the beginning of her career.

There was some controversy around this film. The movie was produced by Tinto Brass, the famous Italian erotic director, and Ms. Rubino, who is pursuing a political career, has vehemently denied to have worked under his direction. She is correct. The movie was directed by Francesco Dominedò and Brass just produced it and said two words in it. It would have been disappointing if she had repudiated her work because it is an impeccable example of a theater improvisation exercise, something that Lee Strassberg would have been proud to see in any of his seminars but, fortunately, it is not the case. The short film is mentioned in the actress website as part of her impressive CV and she seem to be comfortable with it, like it should be.

I honestly don't know where you can find this gem but, please, look for it.

Feminine movie of the month in the magazine Hot Video - April, 2012. The first scene where Giulia, in the freshness of a Lolita, everything of white dressed, refuses himself to his professor is an appetizer for my wet lips. My "mouillomètre" reaches its highlight, my pussy swells when this no suspicious is engaged in a top-grade standard, in a loft so welcoming as the sex burning with this scamp. The movie also has very exciting lesbian scenes. Very elaborate, unique scenario in its kind a movie to be advised for all the women and the men interested in the poetic, sensual and committed porn. Magnificent movie has credit note necessarily in its collection of DVD, so much it is rare from part its design and its ideology.

Thanks to Roy Stuart for this film and the wonderful scene with Tina Aumont. Tina is as usual amazing and what she says is very close with her private history. In my "Waiting for Tina" biography I am glad to write about this scene and its particular atmosphere. "Rome unique objet de mon ressentiment", but not only. It was a town of freedom and experiments on the late sixties and the early seventies and some film producers like Tinto Brass proved it. In Giulia, the music goes perfectly with the picture and the four male characters shown in "Giulia" are a good vision of human being : sex addiction, alibi of faith and brain work, taste for lie, lack of social projects. Maybe it would have been interested to see the evolution of "Giulia" in a second time.

Jean Azarel