This movie combined the overrated novel of Leopold Sacher-Von Masoch (who gave us the word 'masochism'), the talent of underrated Italian director Massimo Dallamano, and the physical charms of European sex diva Laura Antonelli. It has often been confused with the identically titled Jesus Franco movie released about the same time. It is not quite as good as Franco's surreal masterpiece or Dallamano's own follow-up "What Have You Done to Solange?" (which was easily better than ANY Franco movie). Still it is certainly not a waste of time and it does adhere pretty faithfully, perhaps too faithfully, to the banal source novel.
The movie tells the story of a jaded cad who meets a beautiful young woman (Antonelli) and falls in love in love with her after spying on her showering, masturbating, and having sex with strange men. The problem is that she also reminds him of a maid who relentlessly teased him as a adolescent by having sex with the butler while he watched. The woman falls in love with him, but her love quickly sours into contempt when he insists that she beat him and openly cheat on him with various men. This is one of those movies like Godard's "Contempt" or Polanski's "Bitter Moon" where you want to jump onto the screen and slap the protagonist for scorning the adulation of the kind of beautiful woman who most mortal men will never enjoy (but then this guy would probably like that).
Antonelli would go on to be one of Italy's biggest female stars after she went from taking all her clothes off in movies like this to taking all her clothes off in more arty, big-budget fare. This movie is fairly unpretentious at least. Antonelli has her hair dyed blonde and is nearly unrecognizable (at least, until she gets undressed for the first time), but her performance, though regrettably badly dubbed into English, is quite passable. Dallamano also delivers a lot of the superior visual style he would demonstrate in later films like "Solange?". Fans of "Eurotica" who want to venture beyond established auteurs like Franco, Jean Rollins, Walerian Borowzyx, and Jose Larraz would be well advised to check this one out.
