(1987) Love Rites/ Cérémonie d'amour (In French with English subtitles) PSYCHOLOGICAL DRAMA/ MYTH

Adapted from the novel by André Pieyre de Mandiargues co-written and directed by Walerian Borowczyk that has clothing buyer, Hugo Arnold (Mathieu Carrière) becoming infatuated with a prostitute, Miriam Gwen (Marina Pierro) after sitting next to her at a bus while she was fixing her face with makeup and a small mirror. And for a certain time, we hear Hugo's narration, and then by the time he convinces her to make out with him, she then leads him to a mysterious boudoir/ private sitting room.

At first, she becomes his subservient to his advances by allowing him to tie her up from behind and so forth. But then we then hear about what she says about him, that leads to baffling results, and an ending that makes no sense whatsoever.

The best way to describe this is that this is a no plot mythical movie to which I easily dozed off that makes less sense even by the time the movie is over. Viewers expect see any eroticism won't expect to get it from here as the lady, Hugo makes out with, while he is fully nude she on the hand is wearing a nightie with quick glimpses of her vagina that may or may not be hers as the make out scene was filmed behind a glass door.

Frankly, the fact that the version I saw was distributed by a company called 'cult epics', along with the clearly misrepresentative artwork, might make some people (like me perhaps?) wonder is this will be a titillating bit of European exploitation. And, come to think of it, one who might have seen the much earlier 'The Beast' might find it easy to imagine that Borowczyk had headed off more clearly into the exploitative genre.

However, I found that 'Love Rites' didn't incorporate the elements of exploitation' as I see them: there's not much gore to speak of, there really isn't that much nudity, and what sexual activity there is, is too muted to be exploitive.

Watching 'Love Rites' was, to me, much more like a reading classical poetry, classical poetry that combines the romantic and the ribald, to be sure. Although not as familiar as I'd like to be, the thought regularly occurred to me, this related more to Beowulf, Canterbury Tales, or a ribald Shakespearean tale, than Basic Instinct, Unfaithful, etc...

I relaxed and accepted the movie as such. I don't for a minute, regard the seduction exchange across the subway tracks as being realistic in the sense that I think that two people would sit across from each other for an extended period and parry thusly. However, I did find it extremely poetic in the sense that not only the ideas were of interest, but that the cadence, rhythm, and phonetic aspects were all part of the exchange. I actually thought that scene itself to be just a real classic little piece of cinema, delivering much more than what any simply description of what went on could possibly imply.

My criticism of the 'Love Rites' focuses on the last third or so, when the tables are turned. I can't help but wonder if there wasn't a more complementary, perhaps more subtle alternative way to develop that idea of 'turn-about'. The idea would have presentable without any blood, and while I'm not looking for realism, I just have this sense that 'turn-about' could have been accomplished, and depicted, without having to buy into the concept of a fit, healthy, larger male being physically overpowered by his quarry. In my darkest moment, I wondered, gee, maybe Boro thought he'd better add an exploitive element to 'Love Rites'.

By the end, I was thinking back to the first 2/3 or so of the movie, thinking, wow, that was pretty cool, and at the climax, more or less shrugging and thinking, 'oh well, I guess they had to end it somehow...' 6 out of 10, for poetry and word and vision, and a creative idea; marks docked for what felt to me to be a forced and inconsistent conclusion.

But, hey, I'd be the first to agree that I don't really know anything at all.

Hugo sells high end used/factory seconds fashion clothes. He meets a prostitute on the subway and takes an hour to see her butterfly and hear a story about Ping, a former client with no tongue and a lot of saliva. Man, I was bored to tears.

Guide: brief sex and nudity. One punch on the hacker's card.