While vacationing at a lake resort wealthy writer Severin (Régis Vallée) meet photomodel Wanda (Laura Antonelli) who likes to lounge about her cabin in a fur coat and nothing else. This image recalls for Severin a childhood memory of being beaten by the family maid for spying on her and her lover. Severin and Wanda marry and he instructs her to treat him as a slave and punish him. He dresses up as her chauffeur and procures other men for her. Things take a turn when Wanda meets a new lover who is less than receptive to this arrangement.

One of two 1969 films under that title (the other being Jess Franco's superior jazzy fever-dream film which has nothing to do with Sacher-Masoch's novel), Massimo Dallamano's (THE CURSED MEDALLION) adaptation is truer to the novel which itself is but still feels light lightweight sixties fluff despite the novelty of nudity; never as transgressive as the original novel apparently was (certainly not enough to be trimmed by the BBFC). Dallamano and DP Sergio D'Offizi trot out the wide angle lenses, filters, and occasional psychedelic lighting (and some post production solarization I think) and view the sex scenes through all sorts of beaded curtains, keyholes, peepholes, and masks and Gianfranco Reverberi contributes the usual lounge score but it pales in comparison to other works of kitschy European erotica (like Shameless' subsequent release THE FRIGHTENED WOMAN).

Eric Cotenas