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Love "pleases more by the ways in which it shows itself than by itself," says La Rochefoucauld at the start, Walerian Borowczyk between Pasolini's The Canterbury Tales and Arabian Nights has four sketches of his own. The title suggests a jibe at Rohmer, and there's Fabrice Luchini from Claire's Knee for the first segment, "La Marée," contemplating the lissome cousin (Lise Danvers) in the diaphanous shirt. As the tide rises on a rocky beach, boy asks girl to orally illustrate "the mechanics of the sea" to the rhythm of crashing waves and cawing seagulls. (The central image is her puffy mouth, shifting from blankly apprehensive to briefly blissful and then back when her own pleasure is denied.) "Thérèse Philosophe," blessed carnality. The pubescent heroine (Charlotte Alexandra) hears the Holy Spirit while fondling the church organ's pipes, rummaging through the bric-à-brac of a fin de siècle room she finds ecstasy with the help of salacious engravings and cucumbers. By the end, she's a still-life of inflamed, spent flesh, locked up yet libidinously liberated. "Erzsebet Bathory" casts Paloma Picasso as the Blood Countess, a saturnine vulturette rounding up medieval virgins for extended showers followed by sanguinary frenzies. A pearly study of fluids and skin, with the great painter's daughter turned into a Klimt objet d'art as Eros gives way to Thanatos in an ethereal mini-Salò. Finally, "Lucrezia": The Borgia epoch, ecclesiastic pomp and sweets, wicked reflections on Buñuel and Russell. The wanton lady (Florence Bellamy) in a family affair while Savonarola preaches and burns, "quel sacrilège!" The cruel Borowczyk wit in full sway, gleefully reversing another La Rochefoucauld maxim: "Our virtues are most frequently but vices in disguise." With Pascale Christophe, Lorenzo Berinizi, Jacopo Berinizi, and Philippe Desboeuf.
--- Fernando F. Croce |