User Reviews

(1975) La Villa DUBBED PSYCHOLOGICAL ADULT DRAMA

It has Helena (Valérie Boisgel) driving many miles for a two week rendezvous toward a particular villa she believes her lover, Roy is staying at. But upon her arrival at the villa she meets a guy named Frank (Yan Brian) at the door who claims happens to be the owner, and that Roy is unavailable. Frank at first tells her to wait for him, until he tells her later that the reason Roy is busy is because he is making out with another woman. When Helena becomes slightly heated about it she then tells Frank she is leaving, but he manages to convince her to stay as his guest. The owner of the villa at first tells her Roy is busy, and it is like while she is waiting for him, she bathes in the nude to the extent of anticipating Frank would see this as he his looking at her through the window. And just as we think she was going to leave, the movie then jumps to her swimming in his pool naked, and Frank is looking at her through the window from one of his rooms. He becomes tempted and he forcibly makes out with her from the pool to the pool lounge chairs. It was sometime during this point, Frank finally tells Helena as soon as he tells her he was going to take her to him, after checking some empty bedrooms that the person she was looking for had never been to his place, nor has he ever heard of him. That the reason he lied to her was so that he can make out with her. Instead of her getting all angry about it, Frank then proposes Helena to stay at the villa with him for four days and at the same time be subservient to him. When she agrees, he then tries to convince her do some humiliating acts, and when she refuses. It appears that as soon as she heads back to the villa, that she and Frank are then held hostage, and are under the command from four men and one woman. Frank humiliates Helena some more before he orders her to get tied up before him and the four men standing around begin cutting and shaving all of her hair starting from her armpits, to the hair on the top of her head down to her privates before he lets her go. As soon as she drives away while wearing a wig, Frank then drives on after her.

Although, there are plenty of full frontal stuff that includes both men and women, I did not see anything to get excited about, for it's intention was to push the envelope of humiliation.

Alain Nauroy, who also signed porn films using the anagram-style pseudonym "Lino Ayranu", brings style and an element of suspense to FEU AU VENTRE. What starts out as a carefree "couples" style XXX romance turns dark and nasty mid-way through the proceedings.

Lovely and well-built blonde Valerie Boisgel, who mainly had a straight acting career, not porn, stars as Helene, a woman who comes to work for playboy Yan Brian (a Jean Rochefort type) at his split level mansion in Nice. The attractive Riviera setting sets the stage for effective escapist porn in the early reels.

These two thesps previously co-starred in Max Pecas's YOUNG CASANOVA, and they make a good team here too. Fly in the ointment is a young girl staying with Yan, presumably his ward. When she sees Helene and Yan making love by the pool, the girl whips out a huge dildo to masturbate in the window.

The way it's shot, Nauroy might have been using a hardcore double for Boisgel to film the XXX inserts during her otherwise softcore sex scenes. Given her overall career arc that would make sense, and in fact her obvious acting skills raise this film a notch or two.

SPOILERS AHEAD:

This romantic idyll is interrupted by danger ahead: one night our duo falls accidentally into a hole or ditch and start making love when suddenly some creeps start throwing dirt on top of them, as if filling in a grave. They look like juvenile delinquents, flashing a gun and even lighting a fire surrounding the top of the pit.

The guys gang-rape Helene, and Yan doesn't save her, but does carry her home with him afterward. The thugs return and torture Helene in the bathtub and also attack the Yan's young ward. Kinkiness includes a guy attempting to defecate on Yan's chest, but this is not shown completed on screen.

It turns out that Yan is a bad guy after all -this house invasion and rape were all his doings, for which the gang gets paid in due course. A biker girl in the gang is also along for the ride, having a consensual lesbian scene with Yan's ward.

Film's climax is suitably kinky: Helene is strung up nude in bondage, and shaved all over -privates and head too, as an act of humiliation. Donning a blonde wig she drives away. Finale has her and Yan driving in separate cars down a scenic mountain road, while flash-cut highlights of their time together are inserted as a montage. Just as his car catches up with hers there's a freeze frame -will they be reuniting?

Well-lensed storyline porn, FEU AU VENTRE is a good example of what was being done in France (with some integrity and ambition) before porn merely became a product. I also enjoyed Nauroy's later film Africa LOVE, in which he put more emphasis on the sex than here.

Helena (a fine and convincing performance by lovely blonde Valerie Boisgel) goes to the French coastline to meet up with old flame Roy. At Roy's swanky house Helena is told at the door by a suave playboy named Frank (smoothly played by Yan Brian) that Roy is preoccupied with another woman. Helena immediately hits it off with Frank only for things to turn sour when a gang of vicious thugs break into the house.

Director Alain Nauroy makes the most out of the palatial mansion setting, ably crafts and sustains a tense and gritty seamy tone, and brings a deliciously deviant sensibility to the sordid proceedings. Michel Vocoret's clever and compelling script offers a few neat and startling twists complete with a wicked stinger of a surprise ending. The sex scenes are quite hot and explicit: A passionate coupling between Helena and Frank in a pool and a raunchy lesbian make-out session between Frank's secretary and a motorcycle mama rate as definite scorching highlights. Kudos are also in order for Claude Becognee's pretty cinematography and Alain Goraguer's spare, yet effective score. A cool little Eurosleaze sleeper.