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4
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6 |
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10
= Highest Rating |
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SNEAK
PREVIEW
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DVD Release Date: June
12, 2007 |
Prior
to watching this I had only encountered French sex starlet Annie
Belle in House
On The Edge Of The Park (1980), a movie which I really hated
— her memorably steamy shower scene was the one bright spot
in that piece of junk. The petite, short-haired model-turned-actress
can be tomboyish and all woman in equal measure, with absolutely
no inhibitions about being naked before the camera. She was
only 19 when she starred in Laure,
yet another erotic travelogue from the guy who wrote the original
Emmanuelle novel. (Yes, "guy". More about that
later.) It's a meandering, leisurely paced skin flick whose
preoccupation with discussing the philosophy of Free Love —
rather than showin' it to us — ultimately gets a bit tedious.
Belle
plays the title character, a free-spirited, sexually adventurous
preacher's daughter living in the Philippines. Reverend Dad
is a Christian missionary and the director of L.I.P.S., the
Lance Institute of Pacific Studies. At the research center's
Manila campus her father introduces an anthropology lecture
about the mysterious Mara people of a remote Philippine archipelago.
The Mara are said to experience a kind of spiritual/psychological
rebirth at a certain time of the year, losing all memories of
their previous lives during a secretive ritual about which little
is known. (Because it's, like, a secret and stuff.) As Pops
rambles on, Laure runs the control board for the A/V portion
of the lecture... while a giggling female student goes down
on her under the table. You see, Laure's that kind of gal. She
lives for pleasure and new experiences, taking them whenever
and wherever the urge hits her. And she practically never
wears panties.
At Laure's prompting,
the institute's benefactor —
an aging hippie dressed like Jesus —
sanctions an expedition to observe and document the Mara. (The
idea, he says, "really turns me on.") Leading the
trek will be Prof. Morgan (The
Big Racket's Orso Maria Guerrini), foremost expert on the
Mara culture, accompanied by his assistant/lover Myrte (Thai
beauty Marayat Andriane, AKA "Emmanuelle Arsan");
Morgan's sexy blonde wife (also Myrte's lover —
they share) can't go along because she's just found out she's
pregnant. Representing the institute is Laure, who's the most
enthusiastic for the project, and joining her is filmmaker Nicolas
(Zombie's Al Cliver),
her new boyfriend. These folks theorize about the Mara legends,
have a bit of sex, watch each other and other people
having sex, and discuss their concept of open relationships
(mostly the latter) in preparation for the expedition. There
are some odd moments involving a floating house and a wealthy
transvestite helicopter pilot (!), but these are no more than
episodic padding to pad out a film that's mostly padding to
begin with. Laure and Nicolas even exchange wedding vows, with
her father officiating, before the group departs. Theirs is
a completely open marriage, with Laure free to explore her carnal
desires as her husband watches and films the action. Apart from
Free Love ("Jealousy is an obscenity"), voyeurism
is the prevalent theme of the movie... It's a good thing we
have luscious eurobabe Annie Belle to ogle.
The expedition doesn't
get underway until about 50 minutes in. The
journey to a remote Philippine island and down a jungle river
is very picturesque, featuring some striking locations, but
the stretches in between Belle's disrobing are an interminable
bore. (Fortunately she's an avid skinny-dipper and sun worshipper.)
It's mostly just talk, talk, talk — the dialog is silly, pseudo-intellectual
twaddle, as if from a Hallmark Greetings line of 'Erotic Friendship'
cards. I kept hoping for a horde of cannibals to attack, but
no such luck.
An alternate English title for this film was Forever
Emmanuelle, even though there is no character in it with
that name. It's based on the book by the same author as Emmanuelle,
of which the 1974 film version starring Sylvia Kristel was a
major international box-office success. (And NOT to be confused
with the "Single M" Emanuelle series featuring
Laura Gemser.) Laure was to be
made in the same style, with novelist Emmanuelle Arsan not only
scripting and directing the film but acting (and getting naked)
in it as well. Thing is, Arsan (who plays Myrte) didn't actually
write the novels — her husband, French diplomat Louis-Jacques
Rollet-Andriane, did, using her as a 'beard' for the public.
So he ended up doing the writing and helming chores.
(Laure was released with direction
credited to "Anonymous".) Rollet-Andriane may be a
lousy screenwriter but for a novice behind the camera he actually
does a decent job. One sequence in the film stands out for attaining
a palpable vibe of genuine eroticism... Belle, in a long white
dress, slowly enters a pool for a nighttime dip, gradually swimming
free of the garment as her naked body undulates in the water,
lit from beneath. The breathy song, sung in French, that accompanies
Belle's moonlight swim almost sounds as if Ween had done the
score for a sex pic. (The majority of the "easy listening"
soundtrack is laid back to the point of stupefaction.)
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Severin's
new Laure DVD offers an anamorphic
(1.78:1) transfer of a gorgeous, vibrantly colorful and damage-free
print. The dubbed English mono audio track fails to match the
visuals in quality, however, as the crummy dialog sometimes sounds
flat, some of it rather muffled — the track is at least serviceable,
a condition Euro-Cult enthusiasts are well accustomed to.
Two featurettes are included. Emmanuelle
Revealed is a 16-minute interview piece with Italian producer
Ovidio Assonitis, who explains how the film weathered an early
crisis when its original leading lady, porn star Linda Lovelace,
had to be sacked and quickly replaced by Belle; he tells how the
Philippine Army was needed to escort cast and crew into rebel-controlled
territory for remote location shooting. Laure: A Love Story
(14 min.) features co-stars Al Cliver (speaking on camera) and
Annie Belle (via audio interview) talking about the film and the
real-life relationship they shared before, during and after the
movie was made. Belle candidly admits that an alcohol problem,
from a very early age, hampered her career. (Shades of Lindsay
Lohan?) 6/03/07 |
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