Immoral Tales 6: Immoral Women

“Immoral Women” is actually not one of my favorites of Walerian Borowczyk's erotic cinematic repertoire – though it does the job well enough, it is definitely erotic and his retains that cutesie-amusing way Borowczyk has about his films. Immoral Women is actually an anthology, and while the fairy-tale style of the medieval erotic stories have been copied by American low-budget film producer Charles Band for his own erotic anthology (Fairy Tales) the result is pretty low-brow, a little more sleazy (while simultaneously being less explicit!) and not nearly as charming as Borowczyk's sure-handed and lighthearted style, and the way he handles the beauty, nudity, naughtiness (sometimes extreme naughtiness) and erotic qualities with verisimilitude. It's these qualities that actually make a Borowczyk film worth watching.

(Okay, how many times can you say “erotic” in one paragraph, right? I think we all get the idea)My favorite of Borowczyk's films is without a doubt “The Beast” (La Bete), and small-time distribution company Cult Epics releases such a great edition a few years ago, a three-disc spectacular packaged in a black box with awesome front-cover artwork, this was the first Borowczyk film I'd ever seen at all – which brings me around to another observation (/opinion):

I believe that as good as Borowczyk's sex-shenanigan films are, it's really the first one you see that's going to stick with you (if you have a place in your mind – or perhaps somewhere else – for his films). All his films are of upper-quality production value, which makes it seem even more like your watching a piece of erotic cinema, not just a low budget T&A flick (see the Charles Band film if that's more your slant). This juxtaposes severely with the type of eroticism seen in Jess Franco's films, in my opinion. In Franco's films, the sex and nudity appear to be there simply because it's the central visual themes for his film, they're there because they're there, and without it there would be no film at all. Borowczyk's films are far more lush, and I'm not entirely convinced it's merely because he might have had bigger budgets to work with (although judging by the look of his films, that may well be the case), however, Borowczyk's films, or rather the eroticism within his films, appear to have much more of an artistic purpose for being committed to celluloid, which is actually sort of funny because we all know damn well there's as much artistic purpose behind it as Franco's intentions with his sex films. But when it comes down to it, Franco's sex films (or the sexual scenes in his films, however you want to look at it) seem stuck on some perfunctory level of film-making. The sex is there, well, because it is, and that's it. Borowczyk seems much more interested in showing us something genuinely erotic, something that will illicit some sort of response with his audience, which will forever elevate his cinematic erotica above the rest of the crowd, making everyone else's erotica seem like cheap exploitation.

Not that cheap exploitation is a bad thing.

Funny, I really was going into this blog to yak about the “Immoral Women” film – I suppose I got away from myself there talking about the director. Anyway, check it out, check out all of his films, and enjoy.

-V.