Wicked Memoirs of Eugenie (4 Stars)

Made in 1980, this is the second film that Jess Franco made based on Marquis de Sade's novel "Philosophy in the Bedroom". The first film was "Eugenie", made in 1970. Jess Franco expressed dissatisfaction with the 1970 film, which is ironic, because it's now considered a cult film. On the other hand, "Wicked Memoirs of Eugenie" has been forgotten. With the exception of a heavily censored German version, it's never been released on DVD or Blu-Ray. The only version available to me is a poor quality rip from television.

The film is structured around Eugenie herself, played by the German actress Katja Bienert, who can be rightly considered to have been Franco's muse. She functions as both participant and narrative anchor. Rather than arriving as an innocent to be educated in the manner of "Philosophy in the Bedroom", she's already integrated into the decadent world of Alberto's coastal villa. From the outset, she moves through it with familiarity, suggesting that her memoirs are not about initiation, but about immersion.

Alberto, a wealthy libertine, presides over the villa, while his sister Alba shares his life in a relationship that carries an incestuous charge the film treats as entirely normal. Sultana, their slave, completes the central arrangement, her status clearly defined and repeatedly reinforced. Eugenie circulates within this closed system, interacting with each of them in turn, and often acting as the point through which their relationships are expressed.

The narrative unfolds as a series of encounters that Eugenie either participates in or observes. At times she seems aligned with Alberto, sharing his detached, voyeuristic perspective; at others she mirrors Alba's more active, manipulative role, drawing Sultana or other figures into increasingly elaborate situations. This fluidity is key to the film's structure; Eugenie is not fixed in a single position, but shifts between observer, instigator and participant.

Sultana's role as a slave provides a recurring axis for these interactions. Many of the film's sequences revolve around how Eugenie relates to her; sometimes exercising power alongside Alba, sometimes appearing more ambiguous, as though testing the limits of the system she inhabits. These variations do not lead to change so much as repetition with slight differences, reinforcing the sense of a closed world.

Alba remains the most consistently active presence besides Eugenie, often initiating scenarios that Eugenie then enters or reshapes. Alberto, by contrast, begins largely as a spectator, watching the women, but gradually becomes more directly involved, drawn into the same cycles he once merely observed. Eugenie's position links these shifts together, giving the film its loose continuity.

There is no conventional plot development or resolution. Instead, the film accumulates episodes that revolve around Eugenie's movement through the villa and its inhabitants. By the end, she has not "changed" in any clear sense; rather, the film has revealed the full extent of the environment she inhabits and her ease within it.

In contrast to the 1970 film, which retains at least a trace of de Sade's didactic framework, this later work by Jess Franco uses Eugenie less as a character to be shaped than as a constant around which its repetitions and variations can revolve.