Histoire d'O

Adapted from a famous erotic novel – with Sadean overtones – by Dominique Aury (writing as Pauline Reage), this came hot on the heels of director Jaeckin’s box-office smash EMMANUELLE (1974), and was itself followed by Shuji Terayama’s FRUITS OF PASSION (1981). I would also like to watch Jess Franco’s reworking of the same source material, THE SEXUAL STORY OF O (1981) – recently released on DVD through Severin.

Anyway, easily the best things about the film are the pleasing soft-focus photography and Pierre Bachelet’s haunting score. The stunning-looking Corinne Clery is ideally cast in the enigmatic title role – not so her male co-stars, stolid Udo Kier and a rather bemused Anthony Steel (Jaeckin originally wanted Christopher Lee who had actually played a similar role, briefly but effectively, in Franco’s superior EUGENIE...THE STORY OF HER JOURNEY INTO PERVERSION [1969]).

With too many characters involved but not enough explanation as to their particular motives, the film winds up being mostly uninvolving as a result: the female ‘victims’ are too easily willed into participating into the clandestine and degrading goings-on, as if they – and the viewing audience with them – are supposed to take all of this twaddle for granted (not to say seriously)! However, the finale – in which Clery is seen to have mastered her skills in playing the game and now matches her ‘superiors’ in every way – is a nice touch.

The Arrow R2 DVD I watched presents the film in an English-dubbed re-edited version prepared by Jaeckin himself (though the erotic content is said to be intact). Incidentally, I followed this with Radley Metzger’s similar but even more disturbing and explicit THE IMAGE (1976).