Ancient Greece (presumably): Walking through a forest, a man (Michael
Findlay) hears a woman screaming for help as she's caught her foot under a
fallen tree. The man rushes, but not to her rescue but to rape and then
murder her. The film loses interest in this story arc for a good 45
minutes thereafter to show ... women making out in the open, all set to
lesbian poetry by Pierre Louys. It's only for the last few minutes that we
return to the rapist/murderer again, who, leaning over his victim, is
startled to see her coming back to life all of a sudden, then he's chased
through the forest by several of the women making out, before he's killed
in a bizarre ritual that defies interpretation. Lesbian erotica
from the artsy side of the genre: rather than concentrating solely on the
nudity and lovemaking, this film relies heavily on atmosphere and creates
a weird mood all of its own thanks to interesting camerawork, its poetry
serving as a narrative device and substituting on-screen sound, and of
course its classical music score. Ant tht said, this film proves that
artsy doesn't always equal art: As a whole, this film seems to be
pretentious rather than ambitious, it kind of fails to really connect its
poetic narration to the on-screen lovemaking, which becomes rather random
the longer the film goes, it often enough shows its sleazy background only
too clearly (especially when after about half the film new actresses take
over and the film gets way more explicit - a switch pretty much from
nudist beach to almost hardcore). This all results in a failed
experiment one hand of course - but on the other hand, at least for
vintage erotica afficionados, it also results in tons of fun.
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