Jess Franco's Digital Apocalypse, Part 2: FLORES DES PERVERSION (2003)

"Forewarned, said she, of all that was destined to take place at the home of the libertine to whom I was being sent, I dressed myself as a boy, and as I was only twenty, with pretty hair and a pretty face, that costume very well became me."

The above quote, from Sade's The 120 Days of Sodom (1785), is a good example of the writing style of "The Divine Marquis", matter-of-fact, formally stylized with his droll pen. Throughout the epic Sade favors a dry, verbose approach, detailing clothing, rituals, lists of torments and witty conversations between the libertines, the narrators and the victims. Repititive, static and episodic, constantly interrupted with sidebar stories, he is less interested in narrative, pacing and psychology than an obsessive, episodic, irony-rich tapestry of perversion from contemporary taboo. One can easily see from a few sentences in any work of Sade why he would immediately appeal to the filmmaker Jess Franco. Especially the Franco who directed the torture sequence in THE SADISTIC BARON VON KLAUS and the entirety of such films as NECROMOMICON/SUCCUBUS (1967) and such Franco adaptations of Sade as EUGENIE DE SADE, PLAISIR A TROIS and EUGENIE, UNA HISTORIA DE UNA PERVERSION (1980).

"I abhor nature. I detest her because I know her well." This Sadean statement, spoken by the female narrator of Franco's HELTER SKELTER (2002), is repeated again and again throughout its length. A film's female voice addressing a female nature. The Francoverse has been steadily female since his very first feature, WE ARE 18 (1959). If anything, Franco's universe becomes more female as his career progresses in digital. It's no accident that Sade's epic novels, JUSTINE (1791) and JULIETTE (1797), both are built around female protagonists. Franco first read Sade at a young age and it stayed with him throughout his 60 years career. HELTER SKELTER quickly shifts downward into a blurry, slow motion,d magenta and citron tinged fantasia between Lina Romay and a partner for the first half of its runtime. The players are always 100 percent involved in the softcore erotica but nonetheless are also aware of the camera's presence and often gaze at the viewer in the midst of ecstasy. That gaze, making the film interactive, is crucial to the director, he paces his film with regular interactive moments in the midst of his delirious mise-en-scene. It's as if to say directly to the viewer that this is not representational cinema. There's also, as in FLORES DE PERVERSION, a naked, bound male, waiting to be abused, hanging up with a view of the coast through a large window. This film was a warning directly from Sade: "Take me as I am, for I shall not change."

*FLORES DE PERVERSION is based on the posthumous Sade text "Augustine de villeblanche, ou le stratageme de l'amour: HISTORIETTES: CONTES ET FABLIAUS de Donatien-Alphonse-Francois, marquis de Sade, publies pour la premiere fois sur les manuscrits autographs inedits par Maurice Heine. A Paris, pour les members de la Societe du Roman Philosophique, 1926. 4to , 340 pages. 

A Manacoa Film Production Filmed in Malaga, Spain PAL R2 X-Rated-Kult DVD Spanish & German language options with removable English subtitles. Photo Gallery Original Trailer X-Rated Kult Trailers.  

 Mme Villeblanche (Lina Romay) operates an upscale prostitution empire located in a office tower somewhere in Spain. She spends most of her days frolicking in bed with her assistant (Rachael Sheppard), occasionally interrupted by business calls on her cellphone. Two new hookers are hired to lure clients into the torture chambers of Mme... a one-way trip for the customers. Jess Franco has returned to Sade again and again since JUSTINE in 1968. That adaptation of Sade's infamous 1791 novel was scripted by producer Harry Alan Towers, this 21st Century shot-on-Hi-Def direct-to-DVD item, along with its 2005 [onscreen (C) 2003] sister project FLORES DE PASION, has yet to make it to R1 Blu ray. 

 Just as he brought Sade into the 20th Century with works like EUGENIE DE SADE (1970), PLAISIR A TROIS (1973) and EUGENIE...THE STORY OF HER JOURNEY INTO PERVERSION (1970), he's now brought him into the early 21st Century, an age of cellphones, shaved pubic hair and the Internet. This is a situational rather than "plot" film, with Fata Morgana, Carmen Montes acting out bondage, whipping, castration scenarios which climax with sexual cannibalism under the direction of Franco's Princess of Eroticism, Lina Romay. 

This isn't a "nice" movie; approach with caution. Once again, it's all shot in anonymous apartments, hotel rooms and what looks like a brick-walled parking garage... minimalist indoor settings in which the "perverted" tableau unfold. The pubic shaving, lesbian groping and whippings go on and on until "duration" becomes just a term. Nothing often happens in Jess Franco films. That's not a typo. There's no fresh air in this perverse, enclosed universe. Sunlight is replaced by onscreen production lamps, pink, green, yellow electronica and colorized digital noise. We don't even have the comfort of continuous full color, sometimes the image turns b&w, with blood-red highlights. 

 A nude man is crucified upside down and another (Ezequiel Cohen) is flayed, then castrated before his [obviously fake] genitalia are eaten by the hungry whores of the Mme... It's an artificial paradise, a vivid, unapologetic alternate reality presented for your consideration.... the Divine Marquis would be proud.

Obsessively interactive with the ladies teasing the camera lens and the viewer beyond while the Franco favorite "Life is Shit" (THE MIDNIGHT PARTY) and other familiar JF tunes are heard on the soundtrack as if caught in a maddening loop. Will the future be a world without men, just languid, intelligent women who control finances and themselves and enjoy using sex as power? Is Jess wanting us to squirm amidst the sexual terrors? It's disturbing, amusing, boring, fascinating all at the same time. I changed my mind about it. You might hate it. You might, like myself, be unnerved to watch our blissful daughters of Sappho, their faces stained with a jet of the recently castrated victim's blood, look into the camera with an evil smile and assert, "And you...will be next." They really knows how to hurt a guy, at least in the mise en scene of movie reality. And it is only a movie.

You get the distinct impression that Franco wants you to take it personally and will break up laughing when you do. It will be knowing, conspiratorial laughter. He wants you to have an internal debate.   As I stated on my FACEBOOK homepage, I didn't enjoy it on first viewing. The film is not afraid to look us in the eye and laugh at our expectations.

But seeing it again, well... let's just say it takes repeat viewings, if you can take it ... and that's a Big if! Thanks to Francesco Cesari for suggesting I might want to think twice.... More Franco Digital Apocalypse comming in the future. (C) Robert Monell 2024