CECILIA (1982)

A stylish softcore item from Franco's Cecilialater tenure with Eurociné Films, Cecila is, rather perversely, Cecilia one of his most exquisitely-mounted productions of the period. The straightforward but unsettling story, which sounds more like something suited for Joe Sarno, follows a haughty upper class wife, Cecilia (Montosse), who likes to spend her days reenacting the opening from The Story of O by getting nasty in the back seat in front of her chauffeur (Valero). Unfortunately she pushes her servants too far, and as retribution she winds up being attacked by the chauffeur's two brothers -- which has the unintended effect of rekindling her bedroom relationship with her husband, Andre (Mayans), who reluctantly joins her for a swinging lifestyle in their château with erotic parties and additional partners in their bed. However, emotional entanglements ensue that will force them to reassess how they want to be committed to each other.

Originally assembled for the Spanish market in 1980 as Aberraciones sexuales de una mujer casada (or Sexual Aberrations of a Housewife), the film ran a trim 87 minutes and named its main character Emmanuelle. When Eurociné got ahold of it for the more widely distributed 1982 version in French and English, it was padded out considerably with a long flashback featuring Parisian sightseeing footage, a new party scene featuring Franco regular Pierre Taylou, and various minor scene extensions. They also fudged a bit with some of the original music, to mostly inferior effect. However, the story plays out pretty much the same in either cut, even if the Spanish one is a somewhat tighter and more Ceciliafocused presentation. CeciliaFeaturing a memorable one-scene orgy appearance by Lina Romay and enough sex scenes to keep skin fans entertained, Cecilia may not win points for narrative originality but easily scores on the level of pure sensory pleasure. The locales, actors and production design are all unusually lush and elegant for Franco, and even the sex scenes veer more towards Radley Metzger territory than the standard spread-and-grind of his usual sex output. None of the actors (Lina excepted) has the intense cinematic magnetism of Franco's most familiar stock players, but they all perform capably enough and go through their often unclad paces well enough. The wild, semi-incestuous orgy scene (which teeters close to hardcore at one point) is easily the highlight, with some strange visual flourishes best experienced without warning. Of course, the fact that the film seems to position assault as some kind of marital therapy is going to be an issue for a lot of viewers with an approach that puts it in the same dangerous waters as films like Swept Away, Straw Dogs, and Spetters, though in this case it's done with enough of a detached and unrealistic attitude that you could arguably classify it as our protagonist's darkest daydreams in action.

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