The Key (4 Stars)

This is a film made by Tinto Brass in 1983. It takes place in Venice in 1940, a very beautiful city at a very ugly time. To be precise, the film begins on December 31st, 1939 and ends on June 10th, 1940, the day when Italy entered World War Two by declaring war on Great Britain.

The film deals with a wealthy family. John Rolfe is an English art professor who has lived in Venice for most of his adult life. He tops up his income from the university by being paid to validate fake paintings as authentic. His wife Teresa owns a small hotel. His daughter Lisa is engaged to a Bulgarian called Laszlo who imports foreign goods. Despite the collapse of society around them, the family members are only interested in their own affairs.

John and Teresa have been married for 20 years and are still happy together. Teresa is satisfied with the marriage, emotionally and physically, but John wants more excitement. He knows his wife is very prude, so he's scared of telling her what he wants her to do. He keeps a diary locked in his desk. He decides to write down his sexual fantasies, and he leaves the key for Teresa to find. Yes, that's the key in the title. He knows her well. As soon as she finds the key she opens the desk and reads everything. But what has he written? John has written that he fantasises about his wife having an affair with their daughter's fiancé Laszlo. Wow! What a weird thing for him to want. At first Teresa is hesitant, she's been faithful to her husband all the time they were together, but she eventually seduces Laszlo and an affair begins.

The problem is that Teresa has to let her husband know about the affair. There's an easy solution. She begins to write a diary as well, giving details of her affair, which she hides in a place where she expects her husband to find it. Every day they read one another's diaries but never speak openly about what is happening.

In many ways this is a typical film for the Italian director, Tinto Brass. He's obsessed with marital infidelity, claiming that it's necessary to keep marriages intact. Usually he tells the story from the woman's point of view, i.e. a woman wanting to have an affair despite resistance from her husband. In "The Key" the man is the active agent, pushing his wife into an affair that she initially doesn't want.

I dislike Tinto Brass's morals and find his views on marital fidelity absurd, but I have to appreciate the film as a work of art.

The film's soundtrack is amazing, helping to elevate the sleazy plot to artistic heights. The soundtrack was written by Ennio Morricone, probably the greatest film music composer who has ever lived. He's written the music for over 500 films since 1959. He's best known for composing the music for spaghetti westerns, including the Clint Eastwood Dollars Trilogy, but he has composed music in many other styles, including the amazing piano compositions for "The Legend of 1900". In recent years he has worked with Quentin Tarantino on several of his films, including "Kill Bill" and "The Hateful Eight". He's now 87, but I hope he has many years of composing music ahead of him.

All Ladies Do It (3½ Stars)

"All men are really stupid pigs. They preach equality of the sexes, but none of them practise it. They're worms, all of them".

When you see a film with a title like this your first question must be, "All ladies do what?". If you've seen other films directed by Tinto Brass you can probably guess the answer. I shan't keep you in suspense any more. The answer is, all ladies cheat on their husbands.

The film is an adaptation of Mozart's opera, "Cosi fan tutte", which means "They all do it". The main difference between the opera and the film is that the opera merely deals with women being unfaithful, whereas the film also incorporates the theme of prostitution.

Diana and Paolo are a young married couple who live in Rome. Diana is very much in love with her husband, but she likes to flirt with other men, for instance by accidentally touching men standing next to her on crowded trams. She works in an elegant clothing store. She talks to one of their best customers, and she's shocked when she hears about all the expensive gifts she receives from rich men in exchange for sex. Diana talks to her colleague, who replies, "That's nothing special. I sleep with our boss to get a pay rise". So Diana turns to her sister Nadia, who says that if she loves her husband she should sleep with men for money, because her husband will profit from it.

Diana has to travel to Venice when her Aunt Emma dies. The Will is read, and she inherits a luxurious penthouse apartment overlooking the city. While in Venice Diana finds out that her aunt used to be a prostitute and became very wealthy from her work. This was for a good cause, because when she died she left all her money to a convent. Diana meets a man that she first met in Rome and is unfaithful to her husband for the first time, but she feels very guilty about it afterwards. Unable to cope, she spirals into excesses of alcohol and drugs.

Tinto Brass has an agenda. All his films carry the message that women can't be faithful, and the only way for a husband to make his wife happy is to allow her the freedom to be with other men. Is that what women want? Maybe some women, but is it what all women want? I'll let my readers decide.

Frivolous Lola (4 Stars)

"Nothing is true when nothing is untrue".

This was the first film that I ever saw directed by Tinto Brass. I checked it out because it starred Patrick Mower, who I hadn't seen in any films for years. I knew him from the TV series "Callan" and several films from the 1960's and 1970's, but I had no idea what he was doing more recently. I was watching a Hammer Horror film, probably one of the Dracula films, I forget which, and I spotted him as an uncredited extra, not even mentioned in IMDB. A dead body was discovered on the road, and I jumped up and shouted "That's Patrick Mower!" The face was unmistakeable to a fan like me, even though it was only visible for about two seconds. I'll look for it again next time I watch the Dracula films. They're on my list. But the point of all my rambling on in this paragraph is that after spotting him in the Hammer film I decided to look for a recent film he had made, and this was it. It was made in 1998, and it's actually the last film he ever made. In 2001 he joined the cast of the TV soap "Emmerdale" as Rodney Blackstock and he's been a regular ever since, the five episodes a week leaving him no time for anything else.

Now let's get to the film itself. The original Italian name of the film is "Monella", as in the poster above. That's Monella riding the bike. For unfathomable reasons she's been renamed Lola in the English version, both the subtitled and the dubbed version, and the film is called "Frivolous Lola". She's my kind of girl. She's beautiful, she knows it and she shows it. She's constantly flirting with all men around her, revelling in the effect she has on men. She frequently flashes her bottom, for instance when she's riding a bike, and she laughs at the men who stare at her, even if its the village priest whose hands begin to shake when he's trying to read his Bible. But despite her playful attitude she's unhappy. She's still a virgin, and she desperately wants her fiancé Tomaso, the village baker, to make love to her. But he says he wants to wait until they're married. The marriage is only one week away, but that's too long for Lola/Monella. She wants sex now!

Lola's father André (Patrick Mower) is a completely different sort of man. He takes photographs of naked women, and she discovers that during the photo sessions he has sex with his models. One of his models is her mother Zaira, but there are others. She spies on the sessions, and this greatly excites her. She decides to seduce her father, because she can't wait the whole week for Tomaso. At first he refuses -- incest is a sin in strict Catholic villages, isn't it? -- but his will power is shattered when she's naked in his arms. Luckily Zaira interrupts them before anything can happen.

And yet, the seemingly good boy Tomaso is really a hypocrite. He's having regular sex with a prostitute. That's the double moral standards of Catholic communities. Men want a good girl who will remain a virgin until marriage, but they have sex with the bad girls while they're waiting.

This is a fun film. Despite the frequent nudity it's a lot less explicit than my description makes it sound. That's Tinto Brass's style: lots of naked flesh and racy themes (such as incest), but no hard sex. It's a film worth watching by people who are open-minded.

Incidentally, how many of my readers know what mutting is? Lola's beauty provokes two local priests to commit the sin of mutting. If you don't believe it's a sin, check out the Bible. The 11th Commandment makes it clear: "Thou shalt not mutt".

Cheeky (4 Stars)

It's been a long time since I've watched any films directed by Tinto Brass. I'm not sure how long, but it's definitely been more than five years, because that's when I started writing this blog. I really ought to return to his films and watch them again, but at the moment my pile of DVDs and Blu-rays that I want to watch again is getting bigger and bigger. I'll see what I can do.

Tinto Brass is an Italian film director who has been making films for over 50 years, but his recent films are the most famous. That's because the films he has made in the second half of his career have been mostly erotic films. These are the only films of his that I know. Cinematically, they are masterpieces. Every frame of every minute of every film is a work of art. When women appear in his films the camera lingers on their bodies like the eyes of a voyeur, closely examining every curve. When we see scenery it is bright and glorious, never ugly. When we see buildings, outside or inside, every detail is positioned perfectly and the colours are coordinated in a surreal splendour.

As for the messages of his films, they are of dubious moral nature. A recurring motif of his films is that all women are promiscuous. Let's take "Cheeky" as an example. Carla is a young woman who has just moved from Venice to London. Her boyfriend Mateo is still at college and plans to join her later. Early in the film Mateo's best friend Marion tells Mateo that Carla probably has a new lover in London, and it must be exciting for Mateo to think about them having sex. Mateo says that he trusts her, but the seed of doubt has been planted in his mind. He remembers their previous conversations. He once said to her, "I don't know what I would do if you were ever unfaithful to me", and her reply was, "If I were unfaithful to you you would never know, you bad boy". That's a remarkable answer which should have made him suspicious straight away. Why did Carla call him a bad boy? Is it because she denies his right to expect fidelity from her?

In London we see that Carla really can't remain faithful. She has sexual encounters with men and women. Mateo, riddled with doubt, searches Carla's room in Venice in her parents' house. He finds love letters from a man that were written after he was already dating her. He travels to London to confront her. She admits that she was unfaithful, and he breaks up with her. But then the story turns. Mateo walks through the park and sees a couple having sex on a bench. He stands under a tree watching. Then a man approaches him and says that it's his wife. The man enjoys watching her have sex with other men, and he likes it when other men watch as well. Mateo has a moment of clarity. He realises it's a good thing that Carla has sex with other men. He goes back to her and tells her that he forgives her and she can have sex with as many men as she wants.

And they all lived happily ever after.

Fascinating. Is this the new morality according to Tinto Brass? There's a similarity to the films of Russ Meyer, although it's a different message. In Russ Meyer's films the women are sexually insatiable and one man is never enough, so they need other men when their husbands are worn out. In Tinto Brass's films the men are sexually powerful and able to satisfy their partners, but the women want other men just for the sake of it. Women have the right to sleep with whoever they want whenever they want. Do men have the same right, in Tinto Brass's eyes? He doesn't deny it, but he doesn't proclaim it either. Not in this film, at least. I need to compare it with his other films.