Laure / Forever Emanuelle

Another day, another Annie Belle Emmanuelle film.

Aficionados will, however, no doubt note that I use the two M spelling on this occasion.

There is a reason: that Laure / Forever Emmanuelle was scripted and co-directed - albeit anonymously - by the real-life Emmanuelle and / or creator of the character, Emmanuelle Arsan, who also appears on screen, as Myrte, a friend of Belle's character Laure.

This makes, not surprisingly, for an intriguing case as far as theories of auteurism go, of a film which is officially credited to no-one, almost as if being from an unknown source in the manner of a number of erotic / pornographic works, but which clearly otherwise represents Arsan's take on Emmanuelle more than any of the other films bearing her / the character's name.

It's also strange to see Arsan in the flesh. Being of Thai origin, she is if anything more like Laura Gemser than Sylvia Kristel or Belle physically, more Black or Yellow Emanuelle than Emmanuelle. This also tends to put a different slant on the colonialist / exoticist / imperialist / orientalist - delete as applicable - aspects of the franchise, making the whole that bit more cosmopolitan and perhaps allowing for the possibility of challenging the binaries of the exotic and familiar and of orientalist and occidentalist discourses.


Will the 'real' Em(m)anuelle please step forward - Arsan as Myrte

The story in brief is that Laure and Myrte are part of an expedition into a remote area of the Philippines where they, along with Professor Morgan and hippie-type cameraman Nicholas - the inevitable Al Cliver - hope to make contact with a mysterious tribe, the Mara. Nothing so unusual about this, except that the expedition's intentions are more ethnographic than sensation seeking, with none of the usual cannibal ferox subtext or excesses.

Instead the Mara - a significant sounding name if we consider Hindu and Buddhist theology - represent something of the the innocence that has been lost by the westerners and westernised members of the expedition. Specifically, they have an annual rite of rebirth whereby each member of the tribe is reborn to assume a new identity, which they then keep for the next year before the cycle begins again.


The image and the reality - Belle and Cliver make love over his footage of their and others' lovemaking

Indeed, it takes rather a long time for the expedition to get underway, with the first half of the film being more concerned with detailing the erotic exploits of Laure and company and featuring various intellectual digressions that, if not necessarily registering as genuinely profound, indicate an somewhat uncommon level of ambition.

There is also some low humour, as when Laure's assisting the professor with his slideshow of the Mara is short-circuited by the attentions of some of her friends hidden beneath the podium much like Police Academy.

The limit point within the film's discourse of sexual freedom is also apparent. It is, unsurprisingly, male homosexuality While Nicholas indicates that he is not jealous when Laure goes off with another man, on the grounds that he feels whatever she feels and that whatever makes her happy makes him happy, there is never any suggestion that he and the Professor are going to engage with one another sexually in the same ways as Laure, Myrte and the other women do.

The film also features a transgendered character who comments on having chosen her gender. Crucially, however, she is also presented as having a female rather than a male lover in what is either a more challenging instance of queering gender identity or a means of recuperating the character back into the fold, whereby every man wants a woman and every woman a man and / or a woman.

Actually co-directed by Arsan along with Ovidio Assonitis, the film is well enough put together, with good use of locations; a pleasing Nico Fidenco meets Pierre Bachelet score courtesy of Franco Micalizzi, and some nice self-referential touches.

A potential double-bill candidate for screening with Marguerite Duras's India Song?

La Fine dell'innocenza / The End of Innocence / Blue Belle / Emanuelle's Daughter Blue Belle

There are, I think, at least two ways of reading Blue Belle / La Fine dell'innocenza.

The first, suggested by the Oriental setting and Annie Belle's appearances in Forever Emanuelle and Black Emanuelle, White Emanuelle - the later opposite Laura Gemser - is as Em(m)anuelle junior.

The second, suggested by Harry Alan Tower's involvement in the production, along with the presence of his wife/partner Maria Rohm in the cast, is as a more Sadean exercise along the lines of Jess Franco's Eugenie and Justine, being about the initiation of a naïve young woman into the workings of the real world.


La bellissima Belle

Whatever the case, director Massimo Dallamano was a good choice to help a stranger to such material, with his Sacher-Masoch adaptation Venus in Furs and schoolgirls in peril gialli What Have You Done to Solange? and What Have You Done to Your Daughters?, demonstrating a facility for taking what could have merely been sleaze seriously.


A messy close up of someone eating, recalling Dallamano's background as spaghetti western cinematographer

The story, significantly co-authored by Belle, begins with her guardian Michael arriving at the convent school to take her character, confusingly also called Annie Belle in apparent reference to Emmanuelle Arsan's eponymous, semi-autobiographical heroine, away with him.

He gives her a new outfit, which she changes into in the back of the Rolls Royce as a passing cyclist keeps pace with the car and, presumably much like the implied male spectator, enjoys the show.

Already, however, there is also a split evident: if the cyclist knows nothing of the couple and their relationship and plays no further part in the proceedings, we are likely to already more than a little disconcerted by the film-makers' declining to spell out the exact details of Michael and Belle's relationship with one another nor offer the expected explicit condemnation of his borderline incestuous cum Humbert Humbert tendencies.

Nor do things become much clearer after the action shifts to Hong Kong. Michael introduces Belle to his idle rich expatriate associates, before then being arrested on - admittedly well-founded - suspicion of currency smuggling. Left on her own, Laure is forced to make her own way in this demi-monde.


Intertextuality, 70s style

What follows is very much the usual stuff: copious nudity; some intentional humour, much of it revolving Al Cliver's collection of erotic curious and the reactions of more respectable old-timers to them (Cliver's presence feels very much of the cast-one, get-one-free variety, as also seen with the Gemser-Gabriele Tinti pairing in the Black Emanuelle films) ; extensive travelogue and quasi-documentary shooting, including sequences at a Buddhist temple where nun Ines Pellegrini delivers some pat Eastern wisdoms; various softcore lesbian and heterosexual numbers and, most problematic of all, a no-becomes-yes rape scene in which Belle loses her hitherto surprisingly retained virginity at the hands of her new mentor and confidant Linda's lover, Angelo. (Angelo's identity is revealed by the giallo-esque image of his distinctive ring, which Belle recognises in the resulting flashback.) In the end, however, Belle emerges triumphant, a new woman ready to face the world and whatever it can throw at her.




The female gaze, objectifying the male body?

Dallamano's backround as a cinematographer is in evidence in the way he directs, with a particular emphasis on shots that position us distanced from the action through some sort of barrier - a window frame, a piece of ironwork, a fence etc. - or with one character looking in on another.

The importance of voyeurism is further confirmed by several observational moments within the film, with telescopes, binoculars or through a keyhole. While for the most part these present men observing women, they are not exclusively about the "male gaze," with the keyhole scene in fact showing two women objectifying a man. In addition, another scene presents one character listening in, via a discreetly off the hook telephone, to two others making love, indicating a different, aural rather than visual regime and dynamic at work.


Whatever...

Given the film's exotic and Orientalist themes, it is perhaps also worth mentioning that the dominance of the visual over the other senses is arguably less a universal than a product of western culture at a particular point in its development and that, as such, psychoanalytic notions that tend to be derived from the experience of these selfsame cultures may also be less generalisable than their proponents have often recognised. Though there is nothing new in this, with it quickly being recognised that Laura Mulvey's ideas here, for instance, very much assumed a white, middle class, heterosexual position, it is I think also worth reiterating.

Another interrelated issue here is that of consciousness and false consciousness: What do we say and do when the female spectator identifies with the 'wrong' subject position, as defined by the theorist and their theory? How does the theorist square a concern for women's own, supposedly authentic voice and experience, when it does not echo her own? What does the theoriest say when someone who is 'objectively' oppressed by patriarchy, capitalism and/or colonialism subjectively refuses to acknowledge this oppression?

Though such issues may seem navel gazing, the point is that they cut to the heart of exploitation cinema itself. Indeed, Blue Belle brings them closer to the fore than most exploitation films because of the multiple roles played by Belle. While it is difficult to say how far the film reflects her own thoughts on gender relations and coming of age, especially given that the actual writing of the screenplay also included contributions from Dallamano and Towers, the confused messages that emerge are nothing if not challenging.

Who was behind the oh so 1970s "porno rape" scene? Who detailed the reactions of Belle and those around her to her violation? Were these understood as representations of fantasy or of reality? If rape is undoubtedly abhorrent, does this mean that rape fantasies are necessarily bad, as per the old 'pornography is theory, rape is practice' line? Unsurprisingly I don't pretend to have any answers here - indeed, I think such questions are basically unanswerable. But again it is the fact that a basically unpretentious exploitation film that is provoking me to think about them and, hopefully, you to respond.

Like its models and the mondo, with its equivalent scenes of the exotic, unusual and perverse, the film's narrative approach is decidedly episodic, with individual scenes and sequences that often exist in and for themselves as much as a part of the larger whole: After the opening sequence has introduced Belle with medium-length brown hair the next scene, set in the Alps, sees her with her more familiar bleach-blonde pixie crop.

Another, decidedly what-the-hell moment, sees Belle being attacked by a group of robbers and rescued by the timely interventions of a martial artist as if in a Bruce Lee film. This is, however, then retrospectively revealed as being a scene from the making of a film within a film. If the inclusion of such material is incongruous, it also serves to further highlight the interconnections between world popular cinemas - think also here of the Ford / Kurosawa / Leone triangle, of Yojimbo and A Fistful of Dollars - and their willingness to borrow from one another's traditions in search of new attractions to present to their sensation-hungry audiences.

A similar hybridity is evident in Bixio-Frizzi-Tempera's scoring in which the acoustic guitar and female vocal led ballad predominant in the early European sequences, is contrasted with sitar - admittedly not the most obvious Chinese instrument - in some of the Hong Kong sequences before these two themes are eventually reconciled and combined in the penultimate scene.

Il Cacciatore di uomini / Chasseur de l'enfer / Chasseurs d'hommes / Jungfrau unter Kannibalen / Mandingo Manhunter / The Devil Hunter

This 1980 Jess Franco cannibal film opens with some cross-cutting juxtapositions to establish many of the familiar themes and binary oppositions of form: jungle and urban jungle, primitive and civilised, black and white; if the appeal to structuralism seems misplaced, remember that the cannibal genre and its mondo predecessor have quasi-anthropological and ethnological origins, as Claude Levi-Strauss or Jean Rouch for the masses.

These two seemingly disparate worlds soon intersect as a criminal gang, headed by the ever-sleazy Werner Pochath, kidnaps visiting starlet, Laura Crawford, as deliciously incarnated by Playmate Ursula (Buch)Fellner in what we can reasonably assume was not too much of a challenge for one of her physical rather than thespian talents, and foolishly head for the cannibal infested wilderness...


Buchfellner spends as much time out of her clothes as in them

Fearing for the loss of his investment, the starlet's manager hires Al Cliver's Vietnam-veteran mercenary adventurer Peter Weston to go get the girl and out alive; fans of Euro horror will here note that the Weston name suspiciously echoes that of Cliver's co-star Ian McCulloch's character in one of the key films of the closely-related zombie sub-genre of the time, into which Franco and Eurocine would also inevitably venture with the likes of Oasis of the Zombies and Zombie Lake.


The Devil of the title

One other staple of the cannibal film, animal slaughter, is however conspicuous by its absence. Teasing out whom to attribute this merciful omission to, the producers emerge as the more likely candidate. Franco had not shied away from the odd spot of random animal cruelty in films like Bloody Moon or Exorcism, where a snake and a bird respectively made their ultimate sacrifices in the name of his art, whereas Cannibal Terror also distinguished itself in keeping things strictly within the bounds of essentially consensual human-on-human violence.

Everything else is present and correct, with copious nudity from both the tribespeople and Fellner; dancing, rites and other practices of intentionally dubious inauthenticity; a touch of flesh eating, and lots of more or less aimless trekking through the jungles.




Familiar names amongst the crew credits: Rosa M Almirall AKA Lina Romay and Nicole Guettard, AKA the first Mrs Franco

While running considerably longer than previously extant and accessible versions – according to the IMDB the previous runtime was 92 minutes – the new footage in this integral version leads to more of an extended remix that gives us a bit more of what was already there rather than a radically different film as can often be the case in Franco's notoriously tangled filmography.


The old put the camera on its side and climb along the ground trick

The remix idea refers in part to Franco's extensive use of the zoom and actual repeated use of certain shots, such as the natives corybantic ecstasies, but also applies to one of Devil Hunter's more outstanding features, which I didn't remember from a previous viewing. This is the score by Franco and his long-time musical associate Daniel White, a reverb heavy slice of music concrete style soundscape experimentation that at times recalls Bruno Nicolai's equally impressive work on Virgin Amongst the Living Dead.

Another point of note is the way Franco represents the natives' bug-eyed cannibal god / monster, the Devil of the title. Not only does he show the creature's point of view through a hazy subjective camera but also deploys the same technique when we are positioned with one of his victims. While the cynic might easily see this as yet another sign that Franco is an inept filmmaker whose enthusiasm far exceeds his abilities, as an expression of the figure's inhuman power it provides a justification / rationale to Franco's otherwise bizarre seeming assertion that his film influenced Predator.

In terms of the film's own inspirations, meanwhile, the most likely candidate emerges as Sergio Martino's Mountain of the Cannibal God, insofar as it is also a relatively light and straightforward adventure piece. The survivalist and atrocity exhibition themes of Ruggero Deodato's Last Cannibal World and Cannibal Holocaust are less evident, whilst the ever-present sense of irony precludes the more simplistic unpleasantness found in Umberto Lenzi's Eaten Alive and Cannibal Ferox and arguably the more dubious racism endemic within the cycle as a whole.

Irony seems to have been something somewhat lost on Fellner, however. A regular feature in a number of Franco's films and similar low-budget exploitation fare around this time, she later repudiated her involvement in them, explaining that she was young, foolish and misled by her managers.

Severin have clearly put a lot of work into this DVD. While the low-budget nature of the film is obviously something that cannot be overcome, it's a delight to see another Franco film in a presentation that actually allows you to appreciate what he was trying to do rather than putting aesthetic obstacles in the way. Perhaps this isn't sufficient to make Devil Hunter a recommendation to those with more mainstream tastes or a low tolerance for 'bad' cinema, but as a disc 'by fans for fans' it is exemplary.

Una Ondata di piacere / A Wave of Pleasure / Waves of Lust

The opening image of Waves of Lust throws you, makes you pay attention: it’s upside down.

Has someone made a mistake?

The answer is no: we are sharing the point of view of a man standing on his head.




“How's the world upside down?”
“Basically the same as right side up.”
“Then just as sick.”

Rather than being a simple attention-grabbing strategy on the part of the filmmakers – you can imagine audiences being ready to throw things at the screen or to scream at the projectionist – it's also an image that is crucial to an understanding of this 1975 erotic thriller / drama, recurring as it does at the film’s conclusion.

As a device, the image brings to mind the theories of the Russian Formalists, with their notion of defamiliarisation, taking something we know and take for granted and representing it in an unfamiliar way to make us question our presumptions and assumptions. It was, for the formalists, a key component of poetic language.

Yes, it’s yet another filone film that has more to it than meets the eye and which offers a number of interpretive challenges and possibilities.

It's also a vital film for anyone interested in the work of director Ruggero Deodato specifically, coming at a time when he had spent a number of years in television productions to mark the inauguration of his second, 'mature' period as a filmmaker and the introduction of a number of signature marks that would become more pronounced with his later, more (in)famous works.

In Deodato's best films – amongst which Waves of Lust certainly counts – he rarely gives us what we expect. Unless, that is, what we are expecting is a showcasing of humanity at its worst...

Deodato is a filmmaker who denies us easy answers and heroes and villains, tending more to present a division between the dead and the living, more often than not survivors who have been profoundly affected – or damaged – by their experiences.

He also subverts our narrative expectations. The most obvious instance of this is, of course, Cannibal Holocaust with its two films in one structure, but much the same could be said of his thrillers, Waves of Lust included, insofar as he has never really made a straight giallo.

There's no murder mystery plot here, with the discovery of a dead body early on leading nowhere; none of the familiar iconography beyond the J&B bottle, almost a character in its own right at times as it is consumed in quantities that the manufacturers could hardly endorse; and a fundamentally different logic underlying what we are told, not told and left to decide for ourselves.




Not promoting responsible drinking

The result is a chamber piece in which the air is thick with sexual tension, recalling Polanski's Knife in the Water as much as anything, which keeps looking like it is about to move into more obvious Lenzi-style sexy giallo territory but never quite does – a strategy of formalist retardation, at a stretch – by refusing to signpost an obvious noir-style conspiracy of power, lust and wealth despite the central presence of these three ingredients.

The film presents the story of two somewhat contrasting couples who happen to be vacationing at the same coastal resort at the same time.

The first couple comprises Irem – the man standing on his head – and Barbara. They're a bit younger and a bit counter-cultural, but otherwise deliberately sketchily drawn.

The second comprises Giorgio and Silvia. He's a wealthy businessman with a tendency towards cruelty even when sober, she's his property / trophy and the main target of his verbal, mental and physical abuse.

After a few apparently chance encounters in the resort's marketplace and gallery, Giorgio invites Barbara for dinner. She sends Irem in her stead and then arrives with Silvia, whose presence Giorgio had not counted on.

As the evening goes on, it is decided that Irem and Barbara will accompany Giorgio and Silvia on their boating trip. All manner of sexual and other tensions arise as Giorgio expresses his interest in Barbara – an interest which she reciprocates and Irem, with his hippie ideas, is happy to go along with – but proves reluctant to grant parallel license to Silvia, whom he continues to abuse and humiliate...






Along the way we get just about every combination except Giorgio and Irem

Though not as harsh a film as Cannibal Holocaust or House on the Edge of the Park, Waves of Lust still offers a heady mix of sex, violence and general unpleasantness. Yet, it is all curiously unobjectionable, making sense in its own terms.

Thus, if Giorgio at one point brutally stabs an eel he has caught while fishing it is presented, cannibal film-like, as part of nature, red in tooth and claw and, beyond this as an expression of his capitalist, social darwinist understanding of the world – “You fired 600 people?!” “My business regards no one else” – which, in turn, relates back to his cruelty and borderline psychopathic behaviour.


“You've completely destroyed it!”
“It would have done the same to me”
“No that's not true. Humans are always more ferocious. Animals kill out of defence or for food. Only humans do it for their own enjoyment. You enjoy seeing people suffer.”

Yet, in this, he's also different from David Hess's character in House on the Edge of the Park. Whereas Hess's proletarian character is all untrammeled id, doing things without regard for their longer term consequences, Giorgio, with the possible exception of his bingeing on J&B, is far more forward planning and in control.

He behaves in this way, uses these strategies and plays these games because he knows he can get away with them and that they fundamentally work for him, bringing rewards because of the way 'the system' operates.


“You almost killed me today”
“I'm sorry. The idea of going to jail over you doesn't entice me.”
“Don't worry, guys like you never go to jail.”
“You're right.”

As such, like the bourgeois who set up Hess in House's rape-revenge scenario or the cats paws and manipulators of many a giallo, there is then the awkward question of who are the real monsters are, those who cannot help themselves or those who would take advantage of them in their schemes.

In a similar vein, thought the film contains extensive nudity and softcore sex these elements come across not just as an exploitation film essentials – how exactly would you do an erotic thriller without them? – but also as a part of Deodato's almost anthropologically detached approach.

If as a filmmaker he exploits sex as a commodity, it is also because sex also has a commodified value in the world he is depicting.

Deodato's worldview thus for the first time emerges in Waves of Lust as that uniquely disconcerting combination of the critical – there is little doubt that we are supposed to be against Giorgio – and the cynical / cyclical.

Specifically, his take on revolutions, be they social, sexual or both, looks to be along the lines of “what goes around comes around,” leading not so much to a transcendence of any master / slave dialectics as to a temporary – i.e. 180 degree – reversal of fortunes and positions. As with Cannibal Holocaust's closing remark / question, “I wonder who the real cannibals are,” one suspects that this struck a bit too close to home for some.

Deodato's direction is not quite as accomplished as it would be in later films, being functional and effective without always convincing that he had chosen this or that set up, angle or movement for any specific, 'meaningful' reason. This could also, however, be put down in part to the inherent constraints imposed by the main setting. Certainly there is a contrast between the confined spaces and pointed exchanges of words and glances that tend to predominate on the boat and the sub-aqua sequences – likely the major contribution of co-writer Gianlorenzo Battaglia, best known as an underwater camera specialist – whose blue expanses and silence provide punctuating moments of apparent tranquilty.

Even so, danger is ambiguously present, as when Silvia gets trapped in between some rocks on the sea bottom and must be rescued by the others in a collective effort. Was this an accident or a pre-planned incident, a challenge issued by some of those present to see how others would react? As ever, Deodato provides no easy answers or get out, only questions and challenges.

As Giorgio, John Steiner again impresses in his willingness to go for it in the role of a human monster while remaining believably scary. The role of Iram is well-suited to Al Cliver's laid-back, casual style, with his relative inexpressiveness contributing to the effectiveness of his performance by making Iram that bit harder to read. Silvia Dioniso and Elizabeth Turner, as Barbara and Silvia respectively, likewise impress, delivering credible performances that belie the notion they are only present for decorative purposes.

Marcello Giombini's reedy synth score is one of the film's few weak points, though is not too intrusive and also helps ground the film in its specific time and place with its easy / sleazy / trash stylings that provide an aural counterpart to Dioniso's extra-wide flares and Steiner's tastefully patterned trunks.

Another view:
http://bloodyitaliana.blogspot.com/2008/02/ruggero-deodatos-waves-of-lust-1975.html