Augustina Villeblanche (Lina Romay) runs a brothel where her primary duties are spending the days and nights in bed with her assistant (Rachel Sheppard). Two new girls (Carmen Montes and Fata Morgana) have come to work there, which mainly means whipping a man and shaving one another before they decide to eat the man. Such is a day in the late career world of Jess Franco.
Based on Marquis de Sade’s Augustine de Ville Blanche, ou le stratagem de l’amour, this is shot on video in an apartment — maybe the same place where Jess and Lina spent lived — that goes from black and white to color to video effects. Long, languid takes of nothingness; women touching themselves and one another, but presented in such a droning and near robotripping way that the only people who are going to care are those that made it and the devotees of Franco — hey, this is only the 182nd of his movies that I watched, so until I see them all, I am still a dilettante — who will write long and hard about it. So, yes, I guess — me.
I love that when Jess won the Honorary Goya Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2009 for his contributions to Spanish cinema, all these photos were taken of him holding his award. In one of them, surrounded by the greatest examples of Spanish cinema, he stares directly at Penélope Cruz’s chest.
This is the man who summed up his work as “Blood… Tits!… fantastic!”
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