GIULIA, The celebration of the Female
I advise you to buy the director's cut of this great one hour film direct from the director himself since it contains none of the technical faults of the Tinto Brass version. This is an erotic film in the noblest sense of the term. It connects beauty and sensuality with images that are sometimes crude but always poetic. The sex scenes are perfectly integrated into the narrative resulting in a "poetic realism". With Stuart, the sex is real-direct, natural but also exalted, magnified
a gift for the eyes.
ANNA BIELLA's commanding presence illuminates this film with her eyes, her contralto voice, her gestures, and her expressions.. Her acting allies vivaciousness and sweetness, naturalness and sophistication. Through her character, Stuart conveys an anticlerical humanist message. Giulia is an independent young woman who is prepared to offer her body and her spirit against all the religious taboos. The film is a kick in the face to all the up tight puritans that construct moral walls against the natural flow of life. This is exemplified is the final section dealing with the Pope and the devil as well as when she urinates against the Vatican wall. Stuart is the enemy of repressive moral and social routines. There is the drama teacher who thinking only of his own pleasure, is put to the test by Giulia who chooses where and when she wants to have sex with him; she invites him to a live sex show and beckons unsuccessfully for him to join her on stage. Stuart condemns him as he condemns male selfishness, religious fanaticism and all that works against human liberation, particularly when it targets that of the woman-like the the foot fetishist and the aggressor in the park, disruption and aggressiveness are attitudes essentially masculine. Giulia says to the drama teacher, "when one is a man you should seek to understand women". And when one is also an artist, to celebrate them
but for that celebration, like the opera singer in "Capriccio" it's the woman who is at the heart of the creation, before the composer, the writer and the director: three men, three artists that depend on her.
Bokonon, Août 2006
