La Marge, directed by Walerian Borowczyk, is an unusual film that blends art-house cinema with erotica, resulting in a thought-provoking yet sensual experience. It explores the subtle ways emotions are conveyed through body movement, particularly in the context of sexual encounters and the notion that the type of orgasm one experiences with a partner can indicate the depth of their love.

The film focuses on a sex worker, Diana, and the story is told through a unique soundscape that emphasizes ambient noises and music over dialogue. The wind, juke box tunes, and everyday sounds like eating and cleaning create an atmospheric backdrop to the visuals. The cinematography is mobile and sensitive, capturing the environment and characters effectively. The film has a personal and artistic feel, and its slow pace and subtle symbolism add to its enigmatic appeal.

However, the film's obscure nature might be off-putting to some. La Marge sits in an uncomfortable middle ground, perhaps too conventional for fans of the director's early work, yet too restrained for those accustomed to his later releases. The film's exploration of sex and its links to guilt, persecution, and death might be expected themes for those familiar with Borowczyk's work, but they are presented in a more subtle and restrained manner here.

La Marge is an intriguing, if somewhat perplexing, film. It is a unique and personal work of art, but its slow pace, ambiguous symbolism, and focus on subtle emotional cues may make it inaccessible to viewers who prefer more straightforward storytelling.

La Marge is an acquired taste, much like the director's other works, but it leaves a lingering impression, inviting reflection on the relationship between art, sexuality, and human emotion.

There is a French comedy about a film director who sells his script to a movie studio only to find out that he is expected to make a porn flick instead of a dramatic masterpiece. We don't know if this was a nod to Walerian Borowczyk whose filmography evolved from avant-garde to European soft-core, including the almost parodical Emmanuelle V in 1986.

Borowczyk started with ingenious stop motion and animations and shocked the public (and the censors) with the live action Immoral Tales (1974), A Story of Sin (1975) and The Beast (1975), movies that acquired a cult status and that placed him next to contemporary directors as Stanley Kubrick or Roman Polanski. They didn't avoid experiment either but were popular while Borowczyk's movies were only known to the small circle of critics and movie buffs. For his next production he wanted to go for something less shocking and more accessible...

All the necessary ingredients for a successful product were there: 'Andy Warhol' star and beautiful boy Joe Dallesandro, hot in France after appearing in Serge Gainsbourg's movie Je t'aime moi non plus, was hired for the male lead role. Sylvia Kristel was the female lead. Although type-casted as a sex-goddess, she was actually an excellent much-wanted actress and Europe's box-office queen (thanks to the Emmanuelle franchise). A top-score soundtrack was assembled with French songs, old and new, and international hits by 10CC (I'm Not In Love), Elton John (Saturday Night's Alright (For Fighting)), Sailor (Glass of Champagne) and Pink Floyd (Shine On You Crazy Diamond). Bernard Daillencourt was the cinematographer and his work for Borowczyk was so appreciated that David Hamilton hired him in to work on his flimsy but utterly lucrative erotic trilogy: Bilitis, Laura and Tendres Cousines. Actress Camille Lariviere would also figure in Bilitis. The original novel, from writer André Pieyre de Mandiargues, had won the Prix Goncourt for the best novel of 1967. He had also written The Girl on a Motorcycle, put to film with Alain Delon and a young Marianne Faithful.

La Marge is a dramatic mixture of love, death, adultery, suicide and full frontal Euro-chic. A rich and handsome vine-grower, madly in love with his wife and their son, visits a brothel on a business trip to Paris. The previous sentence would be contradictory in about every country, except in France where having an extra-marital fling is something of a national sport. After the obligatory nookie with a disinterested Diana, who literally clinches to her money, the man receives a letter that his son has drowned in the swimming pool and that his wife has committed suicide. Instead of going home for the funeral the widower tries to cope with the tragedy by visiting the prostitute again who feels that something basically has changed in his, and her, attitude. There is no happy end, but – like David Lynch in Twin Peaks – it has lots of weird symbolism like a dwarf watching TV or a voyeuristic cleaning lady looking through the keyholes. Don't be puzzled by this ironic review, the movie is a masterpiece in its genre and one of Borowczyk's best and it seriously mystifies us why this hasn't got the same notoriety like Emmanuelle or Bilitis.

About everything was present to make this the autumn box-office hit of 1976 but La Marge sank without a trace... Sylvia Kristel's blow-job scene, with Shine On You Crazy Diamond on the background, should have been a scene tattooed in every film-fan's brain, like Marlon Brando's butter extravaganza in Last Tango In Paris. To cash in on Sylvia Kristel's fame the movie was even renamed (and re-dubbed) as Emmanuelle '77 (or Emanuela 77) for foreign markets but that only added to the confusion.

It has been rumoured that new (nude or even pornographic) scenes, filmed by another director without the knowledge of Borowczyk, were added for an American cut, known as The Streetwalker, but nobody has ever managed to compare both versions.

The soundtrack, with 10CC, Elton John and Pink Floyd, may also have been the reason why the movie has never became a cult classic as a Gordian copyright knot (aka Pink Floyd's legal stubbornness) prevented a general release on DVD. A Japanese home release, however, does exist, although it has several blurs at strategic places, there also floats a French Canal+ copy around but that omits some of the voyeuristic 'Lynchian' scenes.

A sex scene using Pink Floyd's "Shine on you crazy diamond" as soundtrack is one of the very few original things in this movie. But apart from that, little is to be remembered from this mediocre soft porn film.

Joe Dalessandro and Sylvia Krystel were top sex symbols at the time "La marge" was made; the former still had the infamous Warhol trilogy stamped all over him , while the latter had found stardom a couple of years earlier with the legendary "Emanuelle". I guess it was inevitable that the "talents" of these two were combined in one movie, possibly having their strip-in-every-other-scene fame in mind. And while Krystel seems to be laid back in a territory she is familiar with, Dalessandro is obviously nervous at times, the reason probably being that he CANNOT speak french! Almost each time he speaks, the camera avoids shooting his face, making us seriously think if it is his voice that is heard!

Too bad that such an interesting storyline is wasted on consequent, vaguely linked to each other, sex scenes.

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