Photo Scandale

The kind of thing that compares with Corona's, Fabrizio Corona's famous photo agency, is amateur stuff.
Photo Scandale also known as Paris Scandale a 1979 film directed by Jean-Claude Roy, starts with a blonde on a motorbike faking a mechanical failure to approach a guy, seduce him, and with the help of some accomplices take some rather compromising photos of him. Who they are, it is not clear to me, not least because they then disappear, leaving room for a pair of paparazzi/recruiters, made up of our dear Brigitte Lahaie and a certain Chris, whom we meet for no reason in a mountain chalet. The two think of a cunning money-making scheme and, incidentally, it occurs to me that maybe the ones in the opening work for them. But I am not sure.
Now, before I proceed, I have to say that the idea of making a sexploitation/exploitation film on this theme is really interesting. And in the first twenty minutes, Photo Scandale, it gives us everything that such a film should give us: tits, nudity and some violence.
It has to be said that even after that it gives us everything we need, for a b movie, namely an impressive poverty of means and an industrial quantity of scenes thrown in, between ballets and strip tease numbers taken from another of Roy's films (Brigade call-girls), to lengthen the minutes. This creates an alienating effect, with moments when one does not understand what the film is about.
But in the end, I don't know how, it remains a pleasant, rambling b-movie that is worth watching and it should also be added that Roy occasionally places some pretty good scenes (a few eh).
Getting back to the story, super-blonde Brigitte Lahaie starts out with her partner to follow four girls, daughters of prominent French businessmen doing business with the US, who for obvious scriptual reasons like to hang out drinking and being topless. Chris, Brigitte Lahaie's partner, seduces them, drugs them, undresses them and she arrives, also undresses and takes photos. And of course they threaten to sell everything to the newspapers, creating a scandal that would not be good for their parents' business. Two of the girls fall into a trap, a third, played by Muriel Montossè, is saved thanks to the arrival of Ravel, a private investigator somewhere between Maurice Merli and Closeau, who manages to arrest Chris.
Up to this point, things go quite well, but from here on it's delirium. Brigitte Lahaie practically leaves the scene, except for returning briefly to be arrested (after drugging and undressing the fourth girl) and it turns out that the father who hired the inspector, in addition to continuing to be massaged by a topless oriental and organising BDSM parties at his home, is involved in an industrial espionage ring.
So much for that.
Let's say Roy perhaps wants to tell a noir and perdition story in a smoky and mostly nocturnal Paris. A story where there are no good guys or bad guys and everyone has something to hide. The intent is interesting, but as already mentioned, the means are what they are and the ideas confused. However, Brigitte Lahaie and a very decent soundtrack make up for it, at least in part.