ภาพยนตรืเรื่องนี้มีอีกชื่อว่า How to Seduce a Virgin
(1974)
A Film by Jess Franco
PLOT:
Martine Bressac is released from a psychiatric clinic
after a years treatment and is driven home by her
chauffeur, Mathias. She is welcomed by the demented
hunchbacked gardener Malou and the mute servant girl
Adèle, and impatiently demands the key to her mysterious
private chamber. There, set out like exhibits in a
waxwork, are the bodies of beautiful girls frozen in
postures of terror on the point of death. With Mathias
help, Martine has just added another girl, a prostitute,
to her collection when her husband and accomplice,
Charles, arrives home with slides of a further
prospective victim: Cécile the virginal daughter of a
diplomat
"Pleasure for Three" is a moden fable in which everyone
is hoist by their own petard, bathered in the murky,
torrid atmosphere that Franco is so good at producing.
Alice Arno is magnificent as the keeper of the "museum
of horrors", a nod in the direction of the wax-museums
American films are so good at portraying. Lina Romay as
a sex-slave who only communicates by moaning is very
credible. Only Robert Woods, a defector from westerns,
is unconvincing. As it happens, he has since abandoned
acting, and now sells water softeners for a living.
Franco was to re-use the theme of perverted innocence in
much more explicit films (nor is Plaisir à Trois his
first foray into the genre).
REVIEW:
PLAISIR A TROIS is a wickedly droll and amoral
"morality" play, a chamber piece after Sade''s PHILOSOPHY
IN THE BOUDOIR, but very different in tone and style
from his other adaptations of that work: EUGENIE... HER
JOURNEY INTO PERVERSION (1970), COCKTAIL SPECIAL (1978)
and EUGENIE, HISTORIA UNA PERVERSION (1980), all of
which deal with the supposed corruption of the innocent
"Eugenie", here named Cecile.
A sexually voracious woman and her male consort direct
the proceedings only to have the tables turned on them
at the last moment. PLAISIR was shot in Portugal and
Spain at the same time as the production of LA COMTESSE
PERVERSE, this was 1973 a year of white hot creativity
for JF during which he made 12 feature films, not
counting alternate versions! Shot under the title
OUTRE-TOMBE this is another Franco study of the
artist-as-killer or vice versa.
Martine (Alice Arno, rn:Marie-France Broquet) produces
human sculptures of her female victims after torturing
them to death with whips, chains and the rack. Her male
lover (Robert Woods), a mute sex slave (Lina Romay), the
chauffeur (Howard Vernon) and the gardener (the
delightfully diminutive Alfred Baillou) all know about
the murder spree and more or less enable Martine''s sick
agenda. Cecile, who lives nearby with her wealthy
parents, will be the next victim...
Working with the same cast as LA COMTESSE PERVERSE
Franco delivers a similarly disturbing comedie noire
from a familiar text. We first see Martine in action as
she castrates a brutal lover, filmed in a Wellesian
canted camera setup. Her museum of the tortured dead is
one of the highpoints, discovered in a series of
wide-angle compositions and fluid shots which seem to
make the grotesque sculptures spontaneously revive the
moment they are touched by Martine''s perverse caresses.
The Bressac villa is deconstructed via the use of cubist
set-ups which Franco defiles by surging telezooms which
discover further cubist constructs within the already
claustrobic mise en scene. The striptease marathon set
in the clammy basement lit by a red gel is also a coup
de cinema as well as the more subtle rummagings of
Franco''s restless camera, ever anxious to find new
perspectives and relationships between human and
artifical forms. The bizarre score features what sounds
like kazoos overcome by hard rock guitar interludes. The
lush greenery of the locale is a constant counterpoint
to the sordid human actions which seem conditioned by
the semi-tropical environment.
The performances are good, if not outstanding,
especially Romay''s mute, as in LA COMTESSE NOIRE she
seems to completely lose herself when she doesn''t have
to deal with dialogue. Arno''s and Woods'' voyuerism
involving optical aids are further distanced by the fact
that they are also always being watched by the prying
eyes of their servants.
As always, Franco''s films are first and foremost about
the art of "watching" some kind of transgressive
performance. Sade would have understood Franco''s cinema
very well as Franco understands that there are no
temporal/spatial/philosophical boundries in the fantasy
matrix of the Divine Marquis. GEMIDOS DE PLACER (1981)is
a loose remake of this film featuring extended plan
sequences in an even more radical sytlistic experiment.
This must see film was released in Spain in what have
become knows as "Spanish newstand DVD." We will take a
close look at that presentation and the film itself in
the future...
Robert Monell
Special
Features:
- Interview with Jess Franco (22:38, in English with
German subs)
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