I saw the 'restored version' from 2007 by After Hours Cinema, which was technically OK. Alas, it lacked opening titles and closing titles, so it remains a mystery who the actors are, except for one: Louise Thompson. In this movie she is the slender, beautiful wife. She and her very young husband take in a Swedish exchange student. They show her the surroundings of their house and soon manage to seduce her. In the last 20 minutes of this movie, we mainly see them having sex. Mind you: it is all soft core and soon becomes boring like hell.
Actually the whole movie is quite boring. It is your typical flick from the 1968 to 1972 period. Realism and cynicism dawned on people after realizing the flower power-period was as good as over. And people still weren't happy, even though they looked it. While we see the three main actors running around in the park, or visiting a closed merry-go-round, or having sex, they smile and look happy. The narrators (the actors themselves, actually) however tell another story. A story of empty lives, hollow pleasures. Now it is here that the movie goes wrong. The narrating is bad. The narrators quite often laugh a hollow laugh, but they fail in making the emptiness believable. And thus the awful narration clashes with the visuals, but in the wrong way. Even when the narration paints another picture than the actual visuals, it still has to be a unity. Here it isn't.
What remains is an acceptable peek of life in 1971. The beautiful lifeless suburb the couple lives in is nicely depicted. The clothes, the music: it all fits. Even the acting isn't too bad and Thompson is beautiful indeed. But the narration is pompous, overdone and spoils a lot of the fun. The movie is not sexploitation, so porn lovers will not be very interested in this movie. But there is more nudity in the 2nd half of the movie than many serious movie lovers will be able to tolerate. Especially the movie-in-the-movie is extremely boring. All in all I rate this one a 4 out of 10.
Actually the whole movie is quite boring. It is your typical flick from the 1968 to 1972 period. Realism and cynicism dawned on people after realizing the flower power-period was as good as over. And people still weren't happy, even though they looked it. While we see the three main actors running around in the park, or visiting a closed merry-go-round, or having sex, they smile and look happy. The narrators (the actors themselves, actually) however tell another story. A story of empty lives, hollow pleasures. Now it is here that the movie goes wrong. The narrating is bad. The narrators quite often laugh a hollow laugh, but they fail in making the emptiness believable. And thus the awful narration clashes with the visuals, but in the wrong way. Even when the narration paints another picture than the actual visuals, it still has to be a unity. Here it isn't.
What remains is an acceptable peek of life in 1971. The beautiful lifeless suburb the couple lives in is nicely depicted. The clothes, the music: it all fits. Even the acting isn't too bad and Thompson is beautiful indeed. But the narration is pompous, overdone and spoils a lot of the fun. The movie is not sexploitation, so porn lovers will not be very interested in this movie. But there is more nudity in the 2nd half of the movie than many serious movie lovers will be able to tolerate. Especially the movie-in-the-movie is extremely boring. All in all I rate this one a 4 out of 10.