User Reviews

The late Claude Mulot's savage social satire already contains a kernel of disenchantment with his station in life, that was to grow ever more conspicuous as the years progressed, as he devolved from "cinéma fantastique" (THE BLOOD ROSE) via competently crafted action programmers (PROFESSION : ADVENTURERS) down to sex both simulated (LES CHARNELLES) and all too real. In a cruelly ironic twist, it was this latter capacity that would garner him most notoriety, as fornication filmmaker "Frédéric Lansac" (named after the main character from BLOOD ROSE, played by Philippe Lemaire), a fruitless post-porn attempt at re-integration within the more traditional realms of cinema notwithstanding. His 1975 PUSSY TALK provided the burgeoning French adult industry with a breakthrough film, similar in status to Gerard Damiano's DEEP THROAT across the Atlantic three years earlier, and its reluctant director with his most commercially viable venture to date. While both BLUE ECSTASY and A CHANGE OF PARTNERS, Mulot's additional 1976 triple X offerings, adhered to what was rapidly becoming a blue print for the genre, SHOCKING! shows him kicking and screaming for perhaps the last time until his defiantly bitter skin flick kiss-off PROGRAMMED FOR PLEASURE from 1980.

A series of phone calls between the White House and the Kremlin turns increasingly nasty as the Russian president hurls absurd abuse at the perceived permissiveness of the American film industry, inadvertently jump-starting a third World War ! While troops are fighting in the streets of Paris and the nuclear threat nudges ever closer, a socialite couple attempts to uphold the appearance of normality by allowing their swanky dinner party to proceed as planned, but the cracks are starting to show. Roadside restaurant mogul Alex De Courval (imposing Jacques Insermini, demonstrating a nice line in world-weariness) met his second spouse Juliette (effervescent Emmanuelle Parèze in a standout performance) in a lowly cat house, a fact he has knowingly withheld from his stuffy friends and business associates and which bemuses his wife no end. Privately, she will only perform marital duties for cold hard cash, just so her husband won't forget he married a whore. Alex's son from his previous marriage (assumed one shot Jean Guérin) proves both a cross-dresser and chronic self abuser, an "affliction" his sensuous English tutor Patricia (a scene-stealing turn by the incomparable Karine Gambier) casually alleviates with cool detachment, bringing herself to orgasm as her youthful charge wanks away a mile a minute in open-mouthed reverence !

Their guests for the evening are no better. Armelle, Alex's pathetic frump of a secretary, played surprisingly well by gorgeous, raven-tressed Marie-Christine Chireix (hiding behind geeky Nana Mouskouri spectacles), decides to take matters into her own hands now the end is nigh and profess her unrequited longing for her boss. Friend of the family and moral majority radio talk show host Richard (the late Gilbert Servien, always a solid character actor) claims moral bankruptcy brought about the world's demise but harbors sexual secrets of his own, gleefully exposed by the manipulative Juliette who hired a detective to shoot incriminating footage showing him with a pair of paid sex slaves, for the record played by Carole Gire from producer Francis Leroi's PLAISIRS SOLITAIRES and Françoise Avril a/k/a Ingrid d'Eve who was in José Bénazéraf's stylish LE BORDEL. As the masks of propriety are stripped away and an orgy ensues, narrative intermittently checks in with the feuding faceless presidents, both of whom find release with a local strumpet of their choice, an eager communist laborer and dizzy Hollywood starlet respectively, both portrayed by lovely Cécile Carole who appeared in Alain Payet's FURIES SEXUELLES. Still, while I may be something of a connoisseur of cock ;) there's no way I can identify either actor holding the seat of power. Copious consumption of alcohol (as a cute aside, the American drinks Vodka while his Russian counterpart chugs Bourbon !) leads to an accidentally pressed red button, destroying half the world, with inevitable "retaliation" to avoid being labeled as "soft" in subsequent historical accounts. A series of freeze-frames of the oblivious revelers bestows a kind of blissful innocence upon characters who were until quite recently full of strife.

Sumptuously shot by Roger Fellous, easily the most gifted cinematographer in the admittedly limited French porn talent pool, and surprisingly well-acted throughout, SHOCKING! falters somewhat when it comes down to narrative detail. Why, for instance, such an elaborate build-up to the son's outing as a transvestite when none of the other characters bats so much as an eye lid when he joins their group grope already in progress, dressed to the nines in his step mom's finery ? Needless to say, this makes for a bit of an anti-climax from a dramatic point of view. Also, Armelle's sudden shift in character following sexual humiliation at the hands of her employer, acting out the frustrations from his marriage in an otherwise intricately handled sequence (his partner intermittently changing into the mocking Juliette), seems a credibility-stretching porn contrivance as it allows her to quickly cast off previous (and, thanks to Chireix's credibly detailed performance, apparently deep-seated) inhibitions and become an assertive participant in the group action that takes up the latter part of the movie. None of these inconsistencies prove seriously detrimental to the film, hence my high rating, but it does rather keep it away from achieving top honors, settling for passing grades instead, Mulot's cynical nod 'n' wink to the audience that this was only porn perhaps and that he was just in it for the money.