The Count Of Monte Cristo

Dantès Pique

The Count Of Monte Cristo
aka Le Comte de Monte-Cristo
France/Belgium 2024
Directed by Alexandre de La Patellière
& Matthieu Delaporte
Pathe Blu Ray Zone B

After the recent reworkings of The Three Musketeers (reviewed by me here and here), the French have turned their attention to adapting Alexandre Dumas’ classic tale of revenge, The Count Of Monte Cristo and, it has to be said, I suspect whether you will enjoy this or not would depend on your familiarity with the original work and any of the numerous movie and TV adaptations over the last century or more.

For myself, I quite liked the film (to a point) because I’m one of those few people left alive who still hasn’t got around to reading the original novel but, my dad has always been quite hard on what previous media incarnations have been like in terms of their faithless attempts to bring the story to moving image. Judging by the alternative, constant tuts and his yellings at the screen throughout the almost three hour running time of this version, I can testify that this latest attempt has played hard and fast with the original story, adding stuff and demolishing other important stuff to make it a quite frustrating experience for the familiar onlooker.

It was the most expensive production in France for the end of last year and similarly it was one of the official selections to be sent for Oscar consideration, so one wonders if anyone in production had even ever read the original work. And every now and then, my father would interject the main narrative with cries of, “well there goes another three chapters full they’ve completely cut out.”. So yeah, if you are into Dumas then, maybe don’t look at this version.

For myself, with my brazen unfamiliarity with the original text, I found it quite watchable and even quite gripping... there were some challenges inherent in the production for me too, though.

The film stars Pierre Niney as Edmund Dantès, the titular count, who after being torn from the arms of his lover Mercedes (played by Anaïs Demoustier, who was so good in Daaaaaali!, reviewed here) at their wedding, he’s falsely accused and condemned to stay at the famous French prison fortress, the Château d'If. However, he escapes after 14 years and, with the Knights Templar treasure falling into his hands, he goes on to research, train and extract a slow vengeance on the people who placed him in that situation... 20 years after his original incarceration.

The acting in this is all good but there are definitely some issues with the way things have been portrayed. In the original, Dantès didn’t really have to disguise himself much because the 14 years hard time and 6 years additional preparation for his revenge had aged him, making him look quite different if you are not expecting to see him (or, indeed, believed him perished). In this version, however (and quite strangely), none of the actors seemed to have aged in any significant way in that 20 year gap. They all look more or less exactly the same, for some reason. So what the writers do here, somewhat bizarrely, is give his character ‘realistic masks’ which change his face somehow completely and are the low tech equivalent of the ones used by Tom Cruise and his pals in the Mission: Impossible franchise of movies. The fact that the high tech ones would never, in real life, be able to successfully work, let alone with the technology used when this film is set... well... it’s where the film jumps into the ‘totally preposterous’ zone, I would say.

The film looks really good though. To paraphrase a very good friend of mine (thanks, Madame K), the film ‘looks like an extended perfume advert’ devoted to the warm rich, colourful cinematography devoted to a doomed love (or, you know, an overly expensive perfume... which they all are because perfume should only cost a fiver tops. Right? Bloody Chanel.). So, yeah, really nice to look at but, somehow giving an air of shallow, retro pop culture at the same time. It’s also has a really brilliant score by Jérôme Rebotier which, sadly and mind bogglingly, is not available on a proper CD at time of writing (digital downloads be damned to the hell in which they were invented).  

The film is not exactly an action epic either (like the previous versions of the Musketeer movies). It’s very light on action at all, it has to be said but the story, what remains of it, is quite gripping and I enjoyed some of the cross cutting between rehearsal and execution of ‘the sting’ of various components of Dantès’ revenge, I have to say. So there it is... a new adaptation of The Count Of Monte Cristo but especially for ‘Dumas virgins’ I would say. Great as an intriguing drama but, at the cost of leaving the corpse of Dumas spinning eerily in his grave like a whirlygig, it has to be said.

The Three Musketeers

The Dancing Cavalier

The Three Musketeers
USA 1948 Directed by George Sidney
MGM Spain Blu Ray Zone A/B/C

Warning: Spoilers for all and all for spoilers.

I’ve been revisiting some of the Musketeer films of late and this 1948 Hollywood version of The Three Musketeers is something I’ve been wanting to get back to for a long time. It’s not available in either the UK or US on Blu Ray it seems, so I just got the inexpensive but no less wonderful looking Spanish version, which is multiregion and has both the English language version and English subtitles, should you want them. However, it appears I’ve misremembered this film and done it something of an injustice in my appraisal of it over the years. I was in my teens the last time I saw this version and remembered it somehow as being an adaptation which strayed far from the Alexandre Dumas source, Hollywood Happy Ending and all! As it turns out, now I’ve caught up with it again, nothing could be farther from the truth. It’s actually quite dark towards the end and really is probably the closest movie version I’ve seen to the source.

Clocking in with a two hours and five minutes running time, which was quite a long film for this period of American cinema, it doesn’t just do the first part of the novel, aka The Queen’s Jewels, as pretty much all future US versions did... nope, it goes the whole hog and does everything, more or less. Which is to be applauded (I didn’t remember the film being this long either). So while I remembered Constance and Milady both surviving so the heroes could live happily ever after... it was a false memory... they both die as they do in the novel and then the film goes on even a little more, with a final swordfight brawl in a tavern before the musketeers are brought before the king and Richelieu to answer for the consequences of their actions.

The film is an absolutely star stuffed vehicle too. Here’s a breakdown of the most significant cast... we have song and dance man Gene Kelly playing D’Artagnan, Van Heflin as Athos, Gig Young as Porthos and Robert Coote as Aramis. Above Kelly’s name for top billing for the film we have Lana Turner as Lady de Winter (aka Milady... or My Lady as everyone in this one keeps saying).Then there’s the always wonderful June Allyson as Constance, handmaiden to the Queen of France, as played by the young Angela Lansbury (who also wanted to play Milady but was denied that opportunity). Her husband, King Louis XIII is played by Frank Morgan (The Wizard Of Oz himself), Keenan Wynn is Planchet and lastly, but by no means least, we have the formidable Vincent Price playing Richelieu.

And as both an exciting swashbuckler and fairly faithful adaptation (for once), it’s a humdinger of a movie. I really enjoyed this version and the set piece duels are pretty amazing (the big battles are mostly left untouched and represented by montages but I suspect this film already had a large budget). The music score by Herbert Stothart...  and, ahem, Tchaikovsky... is very much Mickey Mousing it throughout, as you would expect from a large budget, MGM film of the time (even though this is not a musical)... even using comical sounds produced by the orchestra to comment on D’Artagnan’s first, bizarre looking horse, representing the whinnies of his steed. As for that Tchaikovsky... it’s the same love theme used for Flash and Dale in the first Flash Gordon serial from Universal (reviewed by me here). The colours on this thing are also very striking, using the bright hues that MGM used to favour in the 40s and 50s.

Some notes on some of the casting... well Gene Kelly is using, to be polite, some very broad acting skills, perhaps more suited to those musicals but, it’s entertaining and, boy, is he athletic in this. His dancing skills really come to the fore when he’s swashing his buckle in those sword fighting scenes and the stunts, many of which might have been performed by him (by the looks of it), are amazing. Also, his sword fighting seems to be much more confident and very fast compared to the other musketeers. He maybe looks a little older than D’Artagnan should be at this age but, the trade off is he certainly looks like he could do all that fighting himself.

Van Heflin is a bit of a revelation to me in this. Not only a very entertaining turn in the lighter parts, he perfectly conveys the authority of Athos but, also, in those dark recollections of his about his former life with the one who I will not name for fear of spoiling it for ‘musketeer virgins’, he really manages to capture a man’s struggle with darkness really well.

As for Lana Turner, well she didn’t want to be in the film and was suspended by the studio for a while for initially refusing. June Allyson also didn’t really want to be in this but I guess she put up less resistance. Either way, both acquit themselves admirably here.

The film is also a little more violent than I was expecting (other than all those bloodless, under-the-far-arm stabbings of course). For instance, although we do not see Milady stab Constance the mortal blow, we see her hand covered in her victim’s blood later... not a common sight for a movie of that time, I’m sure. Also, although it’s again bloodless, when D’Artagnan kills one of the Cardinal’s men (although not referred to as such, all traces of the catholic church having been expunged in this version in order to offend no one), he impales him on a set of antlers on the tavern wall near the end... almost like a horror movie denouement.

And that’s me pretty much done on one of the most entertaining, rewarding and surprisingly more faithful than I remembered adaptations of The Three Musketeers, except to offer up one last little fact about the film. While I was watching Gene Kelly do his thing, I remarked to my mum and dad that he’s practicing for The Duelling Cavalier... which is the film within a film which he stars in for Singin’ In The Rain. The film which was then ‘fixed’ in the plot of that movie to become The Dancing Cavalier. Well, I was closer to the truth than I knew because, it turns out that some of the footage from this movie was indeed interpolated into The Duelling Cavalier footage in Singing’ In The Rain. So next time I watch that absolute classic, I’ll keep a look out and see if I can spot it. Meanwhile, if you like your musketeer movies, definitely give this one a go.

The Three Musketeers - Chapter II: Milady

Fleur-de-Eva

The Three Musketeers
Chapter II: Milady
Directed by Martin Bourboulon
France/Germany/
Spain/Belgium 2023
Pathe
UK Cinema Print

Made back to back with The Three Musketeers - Chapter I: d’Artagnan (reveiwed here) over a 150 day shoot and released in cinemas in the same year as the first installment, The Three Musketeers - Chapter II - Milady picks up from the cliffhanger ending of the first film but, not before providing a lengthy recap of the events as they played out in the first part (not unlike Richard Lester’s The Four Musketeers did back in the 1970s - review coming in 2024). And this one probably needs it more than most versions if you’ve not seen that first part in a while because, well, to say that this ‘adaptation’ plays hard and fast with Alexandre Dumas’ original writings would be an understatement. I don’t mind that so much because I’ve honestly never seen a filmed version of The Three Musketeers which didn’t stray far from the source material but, yeah, don’t go into this one thinking it’s a faithful version, just because it’s French. It’s got all the tragedy of the original in regards to certain characters but... yeah, the producers do try to have their cake and eat it here by quite pointedly leaving it open for a character to return in some kinda sequel... who certainly didn’t survive beyond this point in the original book.

Because it was all made in one lump, all the cast from the original movie are here for this including the wonderful Four Musketeers played by François Civil (d’Artagnan), the always brilliant Vincent Cassel (as Athos, I’m really not used to seeing this guy playing a heroic character), Romain Duris (Aramis) and Pio Marmaï (Porthos). There’s also Lyna Khoudri as Constance (hardly appearing in this part of the story at all... much like Raquel Welch dropping out of the narrative for a while in the Richard Lester versions) and the incredible Eva Green as arch villainess Milady. Despite playing fast and loose with the character of Milady (not to mention d’Artagnan’s almost complete lack of amorous interest in her compared to his actions in the original story), Green sets the screen on fire as she always does and makes a very memorable version of the character... not to mention getting more involved with the brawling and sword fighting this time around.

Like the first movie, it’s enjoyable hokum and it’s filmed in a very gritty style. Lots of moving camerawork and with most of the fights being done in either single or very long sets of takes with the camera following the action and splitting off at multiple key moments to ‘catch what the next person is up to’ in the heat of battle. What this does is adds a sheen, no matter how artificial, of truth via a fly on the wall style approach to the squirmishes, lending the film a much needed air of credence to counteract just how many liberties are being taken with the story. 

The gorgeous score by Guillaume Roussel also keeps things grounded in the grit and speed of the unfolding story, giving the beautifully shot scenes an audio resonance that distracts from the narrative departures effectively.

So, yeah, look on the way the story unfolds as just a different set of directions for the tale which, in all honesty, still very much has the seeds to take the same cast into the next part of the saga... Twenty Years After, should they decide to come back and do that at some point. Perhaps sooner than later because, for some reason, this new movie version very much leaves things on a cliffhanger ending again... which I wasn’t expecting.

A short review alas but, all in all I have to say that The Three Musketeers - Chapter II: Milady is an enjoyable romp and a good piece of adventure cinema which keeps the blood pumping, displaying equal parts action, romance, comedy, betrayal and tragedy as it gallops towards its conclusion. Will definitely be picking this one up on Blu Ray when it comes out.

The Three Musketeers - D'Artagnan

Not Giving Athos

The Three Musketeers -
d'Artagnan
Directed by Martin Bourboulon
France/Germany/Spain/Belgium  
2023 Pathe
UK cinema release print

Warning: Spoilers to this and, presumably, the sequel, abound.

I’ve always loved adaptations of The Three Musketeers, since I was a kid when my parents took me to cinemas to see Richard Lester’s versions - The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers - and also watching the cartoon version which used to play as part of The Banana Splits show. And I can say I have actually read the first of the three books (five in the UK... get to that in a minute) which make up Alexandre Dumas’ d'Artagnan romances (romance being used in its original, proper usage rather than the lovey dovey stuff that its come to be associated with over the centuries by slovenly practitioners of the King’s English). These are The Three Musketeers, Twenty Years After and The Vicomte of Bragelonne: Ten Years Later.

It’s been quite a while since I read that first book and, alas, because the novels come from one big serial, depending on which publisher you read them with, they are split at different points. It got complicated and, since the publisher I read only had the first title in the set, I have no way of knowing if I would be missing a few chapters out if I read the next one from a different publisher. Moreover, some of the English translations were apparently ‘woked up’ (aka stupidly censored) when it came to various sexual references in the course of the adventures... so there’s no way I’d want to read one of those abominations. Also, the third book is split into between three and five novels over here (again, depending on which translation and publisher you read)... with the most famous being the last part, The Man In The Iron Mask, which has also been made into countless films.

Now I don’t often go to modern movie adaptations but I went to this one, The Three Musketeers - d'Artagnan, because it’s the first time the French have produced their own adaptation of the novel in around 60 years and, also, because Eve Green plays Milady in both this and the sequel (which is set to come out in December of this year... at least in France, we may get it a month or two later in the UK, I’m guessing). So, yeah, I went and, bottom line (if you are concerned with such things) is that I thoroughly enjoyed it. Although one of its problems is one that has plagued pretty much every big or small screen adaptation I’ve seen of it over the years...

Which is... they’ve taken a lot of liberties with this adaptation and this always seems to be the case. So, honestly, if you’re expecting to see a close version to the source literature with this new incarnation, think again... it’s way off at many points (although it certainly nails the spirit of the source). There are three things particularly that stick out and that riled me a little as I watched...

One is that none of the characters appear to have any servants... so characters like Planchet are not present (indeed, a part of his role seems to have been given to Athos after a plot development which seems to differ quite dramatically if memory serves... and it possibly doesn’t serve so well these days so, please be kind to me in the comments, if any).

Secondly, the love of d’Artangan’s life, Constance, is not married to another man as she is in the books and, nor does he have ‘liaisons’ with Milady at some point. So, yeah, it’s a bit much like it’s trying to make everyone in this version extremely ‘pure in heart’, so to speak.

Thirdly, Porthos is pictured as being bisexual which, frankly, he wasn’t in the books and I’m hard pressed to believe that a soldier in the King’s Musketeers at the time would be so openly up front in sleeping with both sexes so... again, a barrier to the authenticity of the time they are trying to capture, for sure.

Other than stuff like this, though, I really didn’t mind all the plot embellishments active in the story and found all the swashbuckling action to be pretty fun. Especially with the approach they’ve take here with the choreographed fight sequences, which seems to be wandering camera taking you right into the action and following various people around without cutting. So yeah, technically it’s a very impressive film too and François Civil is a likeable d’Artagnan... so, there’s that.

One thing which I feel ashamed of myself for is this, though (and a similar thing happened to me on my viewing of the TV show The Rig, reviewed here) and the problem is... I’ve never really liked or appreciated Vincent Cassel. Thinking back on it now, though, that’s because he pretty much always plays a villain of some kind whenever I’ve seen him. Now I’ve watched him playing an arguably sympathetic character in Athos, I realise just how good an actor he is so, yeah, I need to start watching more stuff that he’s in, I think.

There is one other problem with the film, though and... I think it stems not from Cassel’s portrayal of Athos himself, who frankly does kind of turn into a bit of a villain by the later books (from a certain point of view) but, more from the script itself telegraphing things too obviously. And by that I mean... it’s been a long time since I read the book or saw a movie adaptation of it but, even though they seem to be saving this reveal as some kind of plot twist for the sequel... it was pretty obvious to me, as I’m sure it will be to half the audience watching, that the woman Athos was married to and turned in to be branded and hung was, in fact, Milady. Why they’ve chosen not to reveal this when it’s practically spelled out for the audience in terms of the implication of including certain flashbacks, seems a bit strange to me. I’d forgotten all about it but I was certainly in no doubt by the end of the picture (and staying around for the mid-credits post-credit scene helps telegraph this even more).

But, I don’t care... I really enjoyed The Three Musketeers - d'Artagnan and will be first in line for the sequel when it finally arrives on these shores. As I will be for the Blu Rays although, I suspect, the deviations from the original novel will be too much for my dad to remain in any way calm about. Still, if you’re going to see this one, make sure you see it at the cinema because it looks fantastic and the sound design, with the constantly jarring musket shots thumping onto the audio range during the battles, is also outstanding. A cracking good time at the cinema, for sure.

Camille 2000

Camille Toed

Camille 2000
Italy 1969
Directed by Radley Metzger
Arrow Films Blu Ray Region B

Camille 2000 is only the second film I’ve seen directed by Radley Metzger but, like The Lickerish Quartet, which I reviewed here, I was totally blown away by it and I’m absolutely appalled by the lack of response and interest in this film that both the IMDB and certain influential critical web sites have seen fit to let stand. I only knew Metzger before I saw The Lickerish Quartet, by reputation, as a man who made cheesy sexploitation and porn films but, frankly, this is the second time I’ve been both mesmerised and enthused by the way he handles his art and I think this director is worth a lot more of any cineaste’s time... whether that’s an unpopular statement to make or not.

Camille 2000 is Metzger’s, then, contemporary reworking of Alexandre Dumas’ La Dame Aux Camélias but, sad to say, I only know the original work through a reference in Woody Allen’s old stand up routines of the 1960s... so I can’t compare this movie in terms of adaptation although, in all fairness, I don’t think it’s trying to be anything other than slightly inspired by what I’ll grudgingly call the ‘source material’ here. The Allen routine, with the one throwaway line about the original, did tip me off to how the movie was going to end, though, it has to be said.

When I saw The Lickerish Quartet, I’m sure I probably made reference in some way to the metatextual nature of the narrative and the way in which Metzger pulls the objective rug out from the viewer half way through and makes you think about... and question... everything you are seeing. There’s not a heck of a lot of that going on in this movie but he does include a bookending device which plunges you into a similar dilemma of how you might, or might not, read the images differently in context of the whole story and this bookend starts with the title of the movie shouted out by a crew member, possibly Metzger himself, as it is seen in the context of a clapperboard announcing the unfolding film as a specific take. So that’s all quite interesting and I’m wondering if this kind of implied versus perceived reality is a particular fetish or obsession for Metzger and whether it crops up as a signature gesture in many of his other works.

What I do know for sure is that he takes a simplistic plot of a man falling for a woman... a lady who is used to a less morally inclined lifestyle... and explores their relationship, break up and the true nature of their wounded love for each other while embellishing it with a sense of beauty and 'aesthetic wow' which makes the whole thing worth watching. Margueritte, played by the gorgeous Danièle Gaubert, the Carmille character in the film (it’s her nickname because of the flowers she always has around and the ties to the Dumas character it conjures up in people’s minds... oh wait, there’s that metatextuality again) sacrifices her own happiness and breaks up with her naive new lover Armand, played by Nino Castelnuov. Armand is one of many lovers she has and she ditches him because she believes the words of his father that they can never be happy together due to certain aspects of their basic nature. And therein lays the tragedy, of course.

In anyone else’s hands this story might seem dull and pointless but Metzger’s artistry is pushed to the fore and he shows us various encounters between the lovers and their friends (many sexual or filled with nudity) and every scene seemed to me to be a toolbox of new visual treasures... both in style and also, of course, in content. One lady wears a beautiful string vest style dress which hugs her in all the right, revealing  places and it would be true to say that there’s a lot of fascination in this particular movie with see-through costumes... but it’s not just in the costuming that this interest manifests itself.

Yes, there’s a whole lot of transparent or semi transparent costumes in the movie but the director also shows an interest in shooting through or against similar textures made from glass or mirrors and he uses this often to make multiple planes or sections in a screen to position his actresses and actors in, giving us beautiful compositions worthy of some of the most celebrated cinematic artists of our time. This is especially true of the sex scenes and there aren’t many, maybe one or possibly not even that, which aren’t shot through some kind of third party texture or substance.

For instance the first sex scene of the movie, which includes off-screen fellatio, is rendered as various shots through mirrors. Later on, the ‘love making’ utilises the reflections in a whole bank of mirrored panels used to show multiple views of the coupling. Starting off with five panels we, after a while, cut to a close up shot of two of the panels and then we pan along the small bank of mirrors before cutting back to the master shot and repeating the same movement in a larger view of what turns out to be many, multiple mirrors which make up one of the walls of Margeurite’s bed chamber.

In fact, all the sex scenes are equally inventively and tastefully shot, with one specific part of one of the sex scenes being pretty much the only one not executed through some kind of artifically occurring, reflecting or refracting viewpoint. The specific shot I’m thinking of is quite amazing and I want to try to describe it for you here...

Marguerite is lying naked on her back on a bed with only her head and shoulders shown, filling half of the frame coming in from the left of the shot, while Armand performs, presumably, an act of cunnilingus on her. So her head and shoulders are forming a horizontal profile within half of the landscape ratio of the shot. There is a bowl of white flowers, presumably Carmelias, filling up the foreground, in front of her, in the right hand side of the shot. As Margeurite’s pleasure mounts, her breathing becomes heavier on the soundtrack and this is when Metzger (and I believe he went to  lot of trouble to get this set up to work) starts changing the rack focussing of the shot to bring the flowers into deep focus and blur Marguerite’s head and upper body. As she sighs and breathes in and out on her approach to orgasm, Metzger starts refocussing the shot , alternating between her and the flowers, as she breathes in or out... giving us a pulsing and very visual representation of Marguerite’s head space by illustrating it with the rhythm of the constantly shifting differential focussing.

So that’s orgasm through rack focussing... and it’s pretty amazing to watch. Worth the price of admission alone, I would say.

It’s a movie with a lot of visual and conceptual inventiveness throughout and this sets it apart from others. There’s lots of big, inflatable furniture, some completely transparent (just to follow a visual theme, I guess) and the set design when the two ex-lovers separately attend a BDSM themed sex party is quite gob smacking in its execution... what with big dangly chains, gold sparkly stocks and bright colours... not to mention the cage for having sex in the corner, for all to see (and you can bet that Metzger takes full cinematic advantage of his compositional eye with all the vertical sections thrown up by those bars). It’s like ‘nobody in real life’s’ idea of good taste BDSM or in any way realistic to 'the scene' but... it’s quite an eye opener and has a certain sense of charm and fun to it that, perhaps, is something that should be brought back to current BDSM lifestyle trends in some ways. It’s just the kind of party I’d love to attend and... well, I don’t even do parties.

The film is peppered with cool and witty little touches too like, for example, a lady exhaling from the joint she’s been smoking into a balloon, thus inflating it, before passing it on to the next person, who deflates the ballon in his mouth... which is kind of a nice visual way to show this whole kind of drug sharing routine. Or there’s the moment when Armand realises that Camille has not turned up for their date because she is sleeping with another man, so the next day he sends her a personal message of a woman turning up at her door. The messenger turns her back on Marguerite and steps out of her clothes, revealing a written note on her back from Armand, scrawled in lipstick or some other media, which says “You are a whore. I was an idiot.” The implication of how Armand got the message on the gal is plain but also one which Marguerite finds amusing and not in any way troubling... perhaps even a little endearing and this, perhaps, highlights the difference between the inner worlds the two inhabit.

Another interesting scene comes up towards the end of the film, where Armand and the current 'successor' to Marguerite’s charms play a James Bondesque duel of Chemin De Fer, both trading insults about the other’s character and, perhaps unfairly, about Marguerite’s value as a human being too. This was a little hard to watch because, frankly, the tragic character of Marguerite was very much the hero of the story, for me.

There are a load of, pretty much soft core in this case, sex scenes scattered throughout the movie and I have to say they were less than erotic but much more interesting to watch on a visual level... which is one of the key things I personally respond to in terms of cinematic aesthetics. It wasn't the sex scenes that kept me hard, it was the way in which the director used the camera which kept my enthusiasm at much more than half mast. It’s also quite striking that a scene towards the end of the movie, set in a hospital, has the two main characters separated by a plastic, transparent, life support tent... which is kind of an interesting sense of synchronisation with the tone of the characters when you consider that the majority of the sex scenes in the movie between these two are shot via either a reflective or transparent surface... or a groan inducing combination of the two.

Piero Piccioni’s score is, unsurprisingly for a composer of his character, utterly fantastic too. Unfortunately, the soundtrack was issued ages ago by the now, pretty much defunct, Right Tempo label and so it’s quite rare and expensive in a physical edition these days (and if I want to get into the spirit of Camille 2000, then I definitely want to get physical with it). As I was watching, I realised that I had probably already got at least half the musical cues on this because it’s one of those scores which always tends to get represented, by some track or another, on many of the Italian exploitation score compilations I have in the racks... but I’d still like to get my hands on the full version at some point (there’s a download available but... who has room on their computer for downloads?).

And that’s pretty much it, in terms of Camille 2000. I was completely bowled over by the technical artistry in this film and I really need to see more of Radley Metzger’s work now. Unfortunately, a lot of his stuff is quite badly censored in the UK so I’m going to have to do my research and look farther afield than what can be found on these Victorian shores (actually, with the state of censorship in this country as it is, this statement is quite insulting to Victorian values... we’re far worse off in the United Kingdom now than the Victorians ever were). As far as this movie goes, though, the Arrow Blu Ray restoration and remaster is a thing of beauty and it’s got a few nice extras on it too. Definitely something I’d recommend to most lovers of cinema, I think... regardless of the reputation it seems to have garnered over the years. Grab this one while you can.