This movie was made back in 1972, its title an obvious play on the French moniker for John Huston's THE MISFITS. It garnered surprisingly good reviews when it was shown on the Cannes movie market that year (Gee, could it be possible that erotic films somehow carried less of a stigma in the early '70s than they do now ?) and, as it predates Just Jaeckin's landmark EMMANUELLE by at least a year, should perhaps be considered a worthier starting point for classy, almost mainstream erotica than that overblown skin flick. Though you wouldn't know it from the spiced-up - read : insert-laden - DVD version currently available in the US, from VCX as MARIANNE BOUQUET (including an additional sequence involving American performers Eileen Welles and John Seeman), it was also not hardcore. That would've been impossible in '72 France where explicit on-screen sex was still some three years away.
It is however a stunningly photographed erotic drama about a philosophical philanderer named Michel (intriguingly played by the enigmatic Lemoine himself) who drags his not altogether willing wife Marianne (exquisite brunette Claudia Coste who would subsequently fade into a life of bit part obscurity) into a series of carnal affairs with members of both sexes, with ultimately tragic results. Statuesque Janine Reynaud - Mrs. Lemoine when the cameras weren't rolling - has never been displayed to greater advantage as she performs the most memorable frivolous feats as horny fashion model Francis, so named because her parents wanted a boy ! She becomes Michel's amorous accomplice when the uptight Marianne bows out, ruining a perfectly good match when she too expresses desire for love and monogamy, leading to an unforgettable sequence where she gets up to shake her booty at a night club, having told her paramour to either wait for her - which will serve as silent acceptance of sexual singularity - or get out while he still can. No prizes for guessing !
While the movie may appear dated with excessive attention paid to then fashionable furniture and accouterments, the elaborate erotic encounters still pack a passionate punch, embellished no end by Philippe Théaudière's beautiful cinematography with an ingenuous employment of mirror effects. There's an absolutely haunting romantic theme melody as well, hard to figure out exactly whose handiwork as the soundtrack's credited to no less than three composers, the best known among which would be Jess Franco regular Daniel White.
Literally fleshing out the cast are several long forgotten skin starlets of this pioneering period, several of whom would turn up in the filmmaker's following films, like blond bombshell Martine Azencot and her perfect pendulous pair - well remembered by anyone who saw her in LES PETITES SAINTES Y TOUCHENT or LES CONFIDENCES EROTIQUES D'UN LIT TROP ACCEUILLANT - as the bespectacled and therefore, through dire cinematic shorthand, "intellectual" Edith, picked up by Michel and Marianne for their ill-fated attempt at communal adultery. Both appearing in what would prove to be the director's most ambitious if ultimately rather flawed work, LES CHIENNES, Françoise Dammien and Virginie Vignon (a surprisingly adept light comedienne this one) appear as the girl shared by Francis and Michel in front of a crackling fireplace and the air-headed streetwalker he picks up at the exact moment his wife meets her "hand of God" fate respectively. Odd girls out, ravishing raven-haired Magda Mundari (who would dip her dainty toes in the porno pond with José Bénazéraf's LA VEUVE LUBRIQUE) has the languorous lesbian number with one shot Scandinavian blond Lena Nilsson as part of Michel's post-Francis spiral into sexual frustration and late respected British actress Prunella Ransome (who played the unfortunate Fanny in John Schlesinger's achingly romantic FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD) turns up as the mentally unstable Patricia harboring a roomful of dolls whom she creepily considers ardent admirers, showing a bit of shapely leg but nothing more.
Lemoine loosely remade this story in a hardcore version (with a hard to swallow happy ending and, yecch, a Richard Clayderman score !!!) a decade later as ARDEURS D'ETE a.k.a. HOT BODIES with Italian stallion Gabriel Pontello and the spectacularly underrated Cathy Menard portraying the husband and wife swap team. The original remains his best overall achievement though, coy though it may seem in the age of unlimited Internet porn, an unabashedly melodramatic carnal classic well worth revisiting.
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