THE DARK SIDE OF LOVE

THE DARK SIDE OF LOVE

I am sure you have all, at some point, been given the "depends on my mood" answer when enquiring about an individual’s favourite movie. Well folks, if your current temperament yearns for an incestuous tale about a teenage hypochondriac hermit whose addictions to pornography are manipulated into a taboo relationship with his eccentric older sister; this 1985 Italian slice of Erotica could be just the answer!

Emilio (Lorenzo Lena) is the aforementioned adolescent who, due to an unnamed illness, is subject to donning a neck-brace and bespoke corset. He spends his days locked away in his room, curtains drawn shut, indulging in marathon sessions of triple X delights on his VCR player. Emilio has been raised by his mollycoddling grandma, but her recent passing means a new guardian has to take on the responsibility.

Enter Patrizia (Monica Guerritore), his older sister and very successful business woman in the world of fashion. She decides, however, to put her lucrative career on hold in order to sort her younger sibling out. Initially she tries to reduce his extreme introverted and fearful demeanour by enticing Emilio into accompanying her to the beach to perhaps meet a girl or two.

But it’s not long before relationship follows a rather forbidden path. As her plan starts to bare fruits of success, a mixture of her own jealously and covetousness starts to take over. Possibly helped by the fact that Patrizia is often in various states of undress during their verbal exchanges, she notices his crotch usually resembles a circus tent!

As she gains his trust, he discloses his fears: the sun, car crashes, the ocean, well pretty much everything really. Patrizia in turn starts to divulge more tawdry chatter about her youthful sexual awakening. One typical recollection was an occasion in a cinema as a 15 year old girl where she found her palms lubricated with a "warm viscous substance" after a little fumbling with a the groin of a stranger sitting next to her. (And no it wasn’t the mustard from his hotdog either!). Such explicit revelations serve to unleash their mutual lust.

Although barely restrained, the excitement from their bizarre games soon transgresses into fits of violent jealousy from either side. Should they end their insalubrious romance – or will their attempts to contain their noxious lust prove futile..? One 7 Movies really have a knack of unearthing some rare Euro sex classics don’t they? Here we have a movie directed by the late Italian director Salvatore Samperi whose filmography was deemed boldly provocative and controversial. I knew very little about Samperi before seeing this movie and a brief bit of research demonstrated the vast majority of his work was notorious for dealing with controversial sexual relationships that knew no boundaries.

Although a version of TDSOL surfaced a while back on VHS through the Jezebel label, One 7’s version is fully uncut. While the sordidness of the picture is more to do with the subject matter than specific erotic set pieces, there was the odd hardcore shot (of Emilio’s video indulgences) to confirm the completeness of the print. The movie has a real Italian look to it and while Dante Spinotte’s cinematography may not be the most exciting, it at least is very consistent throughout. With a narrative heavily weighted with the two main characters, it is very notable just how much emphasis is put on the lighting. The periphery of the anamorphic widescreen is often reduced to near black, with gentle illumination concentrated on facial close ups as the erotic discourses unfurl.

I felt the movie itself filled the void between ‘Art House’ cinema and ‘softcore’ exploitation. On one hand this gave the picture a unique atmosphere, on the other it seemed a little confused. As you would expect the picture contained a generous amount of nudity and sex, but this aspect didn’t override the developing relationship between Emilio and Patrizia.

My only major criticism of the movie was the musical score which just reeked of mid 1980’s pop. All too often Fred Bongusto’s (what a brilliant name!) repetitive melody tarnished the movie with avertable camp overtones.

It was rather ironic however that my favourite scene of the movie was not a seductively sexy or brazenly explicit sequence, but a musical one. In the dinner party scene, Patrizia’s ill-fated attempt to seduce Emilo’s professor is accompanied by a crazy band backing band. Why is the scene so good? The drummer looks like the bastard love child of Jim Van Bebber and Groucho Marx!

The DVD has both an Italian and English dialogue soundtrack included and these each come courtesy of a Dolby Digital Stereo mix. Unfortunately no English subtitles are included for the Italian language track. How accurate the dubbing was in unclear but it did offer some absolute gems such as "… touch the wet lips of my flower.." Very classy!

The English soundtrack itself was for the most part of a good standard but if I had to be picky there were a couple of instances of distorted auditory blemishes in the speech. As I say, they were merely a couple of isolated examples and definitely NOT a consistent flaw in this respect.

The print itself is the aforementioned original 1.85:1 aspect ratio and portrayed a seemingly accurate depiction of flesh tones and sharp visuals throughout.

Rather disappointingly, the One 7 Movies disc contains no "Extras" whatsoever. But if you have a penchant for controversial Euro erotica you may still want to own an uncensored version of a movie that stubbornly refuses to take a moral stance and, despite the uncomfortable narrative, is very aesthetically pleasing.

Review by Marc Lissenburg


 
Released by One 7 Movies
Region 1
Not Rated
Extras :
see main review
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