This is a striking feature by Joe Sarno that displays to the full extent his skills in high-key black and white lighting, effective mise en scène, and casting and directing actors. The series of models parading in and out of fashion photographer Henning's life and bedroom (in a not so subtle reference to the film BLOW UP), offers the perfect opportunity for a cinematic and erotic exploration of the ideal male fantasy, which is total artistic and sexual command of a stable of beautiful and willing women. The nymph who enters his life, occupies his spare room, and slowly turns his ideal setup upside down is yet another component to this fantasy, at at least for the viewer, as it allows for girl on girl scenes in which the models are further dominated sexually, and in which there is more sexual variety and kinkiness at play. Sarno's use of the female face captures the erotic more fully than many films which are fully graphic, and the psychological components of sexual desire are both varied and realistic.
Indeed, viewing the film made me understand fully what it would be like to be a male with the desire to sexually dominate a series of women, as it presents such a fantasy outside of moral concerns or even social concerns, but purely as a giddy lifestyle of pleasure from which no escape would ever be desired. Oddly enough, this also gives the women, who are otherwise so individual and so uniquely beautiful, an interchangeability that can be chilling to the heart of a romantic. There is a Sadean dimension to the pleasure that erases the importance of the women, even as they are made full subjects in terms of their equal and complicit engagement in the acts which they crave.
The man always remains intact and individual, insofar as he is the only male on screen in a sea of women, and because he is a complete person and an artist in his own right, liking sex but not needing it to complete and define him. The women, on the other hand, have no identity separate from what sex gives them (their inside dimension) or what their appearance offers to the screen and to his camera (their outside dimension). They are eaten up by both cameras and by the male gaze, in such a voracious way that there is nothing left to hide, and in this feat lies Sarno's skill as a director, that he can lay this vulnerability bare and get these actresses to go to places that you normally don't see women go in movies.
Therefore, the goal of the photographer in this film (to capture something in women that is fully erotic, fully female in the darkest sense), is met successfully by the protagonist's camera, and also by Sarno's camera. Even as the photographer in the film complains that he can't capture on film the expression that his lover has when she is transported by pleasure, Sarno's camera shows us this expression, and tells us at the same time that we are watching something extraordinary.
Indeed, viewing the film made me understand fully what it would be like to be a male with the desire to sexually dominate a series of women, as it presents such a fantasy outside of moral concerns or even social concerns, but purely as a giddy lifestyle of pleasure from which no escape would ever be desired. Oddly enough, this also gives the women, who are otherwise so individual and so uniquely beautiful, an interchangeability that can be chilling to the heart of a romantic. There is a Sadean dimension to the pleasure that erases the importance of the women, even as they are made full subjects in terms of their equal and complicit engagement in the acts which they crave.
The man always remains intact and individual, insofar as he is the only male on screen in a sea of women, and because he is a complete person and an artist in his own right, liking sex but not needing it to complete and define him. The women, on the other hand, have no identity separate from what sex gives them (their inside dimension) or what their appearance offers to the screen and to his camera (their outside dimension). They are eaten up by both cameras and by the male gaze, in such a voracious way that there is nothing left to hide, and in this feat lies Sarno's skill as a director, that he can lay this vulnerability bare and get these actresses to go to places that you normally don't see women go in movies.
Therefore, the goal of the photographer in this film (to capture something in women that is fully erotic, fully female in the darkest sense), is met successfully by the protagonist's camera, and also by Sarno's camera. Even as the photographer in the film complains that he can't capture on film the expression that his lover has when she is transported by pleasure, Sarno's camera shows us this expression, and tells us at the same time that we are watching something extraordinary.