You wouldn't expect a Jess Franco Eurocine film called 'Shining Sex' to be a chaste affair - you might well feel cheated if it was. Within moments, Lina Romay, who features prominently in every sense of the word, treats a surprisingly well-to-do audience to a sexual striptease, as the camera swoops in in unforgiving close-ups on every mole, every goose bump. She's also a very cheerful prostitute, and her exhibitionism still turned up to 11, goes off with a mysterious couple for a threesome.
The throes of anguish/ecstasy that fill the next few scenes begin to get tiresome, when the first tendrils of a storyline begin to reach out; at last things become interesting. The couple, Alpha and Andros (Evelyne Scott and Raymond Hardy) are far more mysterious than they initially seem, and Cynthia's (Romay) writhing takes on a different meaning.
It's reassuring to see some familiar faces - the always excellent Monica Swinn as Madame Pécame and Olivier Mathot as Elmos Kallman - although Swinn's character is suitably weird and distant and *far* from reassuring. Franco himself also features as good old Dr. Seward, whose voice is dubbed by someone reaching for his inner Peter Lorre!
Romay is consistently wonderful in this. The transformation from her giggly, extroverted stripper, to seemingly emotionless pawn in the game being played, seems effortless and is highly convincing. Likewise, the shifting from sleazy 70s sex show to something quite different is very powerful - although there is always time for some graphically intimate shots of coupling. It's typically atypical in a Jess Franco film that features gratuitous amounts of female nudity and exploitation, that the female Alpha is fully in charge and Andros is very much her subordinate. An interesting wander into sci-fi territory for Uncle J. My score is 7 out of 10.
