“Wealthy but neglected wife Christina is seduced by a close friend of her husband and introduced to new erotic experiences.”

Yes, this IMDB listing really could be any erotic film released after Just Jaeckin’s Emmanuelle.

Also known as Voglia di guardare (The Pleasure of Watching), the real story here is that Christina, played by Jenny Tamburi from The Suspicious Death of a Minor and The Psychic, is being used by her husband (Marino Masé, Contamination) who is setting up this affair because he likes to watch from a distance.

So yeah, it’s Luis Bunuel’s Belle du Jour but D’Amato has lined up Lilli Carati (To Be Twenty) and, of course, Laura Gemser to liven up the story. This is from a time when D’Amato was making period dramas with plenty of eroticism in them. So this looks gorgeous, nearly dreamy, and has the added benefit of a heroine who develops her own agency and understanding of her feminine powers, using them to win out over the men who see her as an object to be watched or taken.

Can you learn something from Joe D’Amato movies (beyond the fact that the Vatican has a secret program to create super soldiers)? I think so.