Review of The Libertine

The Libertine (1968)
1/10
stupid and offensive
24 November 2005
Lord, this sucked. There's a particular sort of sexual revolution flick from the 60s that manages to confuse sexual assault with sexual liberation. This film is an example. I lost track of how many times women are slapped, hit, whipped, or spanked in the film. And then there are all the times that women in the film fantasize about being slapped, hit, whipped or spanked (you know they want it, right?). Sometimes it is ostensibly part of safe fetish play-acting. Other times it plainly isn't, but you will wait in vain to see the heroine report to authorities that she has just been raped. Instead we get to hear her being lectured by her rapist about her inability to "let go".

Every scene of this film reeks of misogyny (speaking as a straight, white, married man in his late 30's, not a teenage lesbian women's studies major with a chip on her shoulder, lest you get the wrong idea).

Perhaps the one good thing about this film is that it provides a stark reminder of just how bad things really were for women only a few short decades ago.
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