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Dying is easy, comedy is hard, comedy in the midst of hardcore fucking is a challenge. Radley Metzger is more than up to it, at the Pigalle theater the geezer in the Napoleon hat blithely salutes the screen while getting manual satisfaction from the heroine. Misty Beethoven, née Dolores, a feline starlet (Constance Money) hidden under curly wig and lipstick smear, "the absolute nadir of passion" to the upper-crust sexologist (Jamie Gillis). From uncouth hooker to "Golden Rod Girl" at the magazine's annual bash, a bet with a fellow randy jet-setter (Jacqueline Beudant) and a transformation set to the iambic pentameter of Retzger's peppy montage. "You shall make three men cum simultaneously. It will give you confidence." The grand courtisane made not born, one oral lesson at a time—she at last triumphs with the triple ejaculation and then quietly sobs, because the Svengali she's fallen for remembers Naughty Marietta but not My Fair Lady. "It reminds one of a hippopotamus trying to play the piano," as Flaubert would have it. Soigné running gags, opulent filming in Paris and Rome and New York, adroit repartee at one point shushed as to not disturb the fellatio taking place in the same drawing room. The inauguration takes place at a glamour soirée, the elegantly kinky hosts (Ras Kean and Gloria Leonard) welcome the delicately raunchy swan into high society and into their ménage. If not a blue Lubitsch, then at least a porn Blake Edwards. (10 recognizes the alliance and returns the favor.) "The play's the thing to catch the hard-on of a king." It ends merrily with an upgrade on Shaw, Galatea in business slacks and Pygmalion in bondage gear. With Terri Hall, Casey Donovan, Mary Stuart, Tia von Davis, Ian Morley, and Marlene Willoughby.
--- Fernando F. Croce |