The decadent bourgeoisie, Italy under fascism, sex and Venice shoot to the audience in the first minutes without filters are a great introduction for this 1985 Joe D'Amato's movie. And it takes a few seconds to understand that ours is back on the tracks of Tinto Brass. And it always takes little to realize that this time the result is less ambitious than "L'Alcova".
Think less and act more D'Amato and we can say it's a great meeting between him and Brass.
Then it's clear that he copies the style of Brass and there is a more technological reference to "La Chiave", while D'Annunzio's novel is just a case of homonymy.
But this movie is a nice view, thanks to a good direction and photography by D'Amato and an extraordinary cast, who don't play well but is very beautiful.
Laura Gemser maitresse who offers opium and sex to her clients, Dagmar Lassander always maitresse, but with good feelings, are a shoulder to a beautiful Lilli Carati and a surprising Andrea Guzon, who with Gabriele Tinti and the meteor Marco Mattioli complete the most important roles .
Morbidity is the core of the whole story and sometimes it touches very high tips and we also say absurd. The dressing of a woman's body, the sister who tends her tits to her brother to calm his convulsions and reading various notes also some other moments cut-off in the most versions. The story is slow and, above all, it is lost on the finale that would make us think of a dramatic shot that, however, can easily be expected, does not arrive.
Gérard (Gabriele Tinti) knows during the Carnival of Venice the beautiful Leonora (Isabelle Andrea Guzon), with which creates a morbid relationship of so many erotic adventures. She loves to prostitute in a brothel, loves to seduce casually encountered men, while he records everything on a tape recorder. The woman dies one day. And Gérard who lives with Fiorella (Lilli Carati) becomes the guardian of the sons of Leonora, Ursula (always Isabelle Andrea Guzon) and the "rigid" Fascist Edmond (Marco Mattioli).
Ursula seeks in every way to conquer the man by making him relive the erotic experiences he had with his mother. But Gérard tries to resist. Fiorella, on the other hand, had sex with Edmond and also gets a lesbian relationship with Laura Gemser in a well-directed scene, which, in fact, serves to lengthen the minute.
Gérard's anti-fascist father, who is just an optional, on the side-lines, because the point here is another and D'Amato knows it well.