Les couples du Bois de Boulogne

"The Couples Of Boulogne" is an entertaining French sex comedy from the 1970s. The film is something of an oddity, being neither straightforward soft core porn, nor an attempt at serious film-making. The film does have a plot and strong production values but there is no underlying symbolism or social commentary. The director makes it clear from the very beginning that his goal is to pad the skeletal storyline with as much nudity and gratuitous sexual activity as possible. The result lies somewhere between Porkies and a cheap, French James Bond film.

The plot revolves around an unhappily married couple who become sworn enemies when a wealthy man offers a one million dollar reward to the spouse who succeeds in finding his missing son first. The film follows the progress of the pair on their search for the missing man, as they find new lovers and embark on a series of increasingly ludicrous sexual adventures, which include various threesome combinations, a memorable orgy and an acrobatic sexual encounter on a yacht.

Personally, I found "The Couples Of Boulogne" more amusing than erotic. The scene where Barbara performs cunnilingus on the maid in front of her unimpressed husband is downright hilarious. There is indeed a lot of flesh on display but the context in which it appears, is just too ridiculous to be anything other than funny. The film does offer an interesting insight into the European moral code of the 1970s and contains some beautiful footage France and the Caribbean. However, the film can not quite sustain it's paper thin plot over the full running time and I had lost interest by the time the film reached its uninspired conclusion.

Think of a newspaper strip cartoon which regularly depicts, in a farcical manner, humorous and almost always sexy incidents from the lives of the citizens living in a modern Parisian suburb. Then visualise these incidents not being drawn with cartoon characters, but filmed with live actors and displayed as very short daily vignettes on a Parisian TV program rather than in a newspaper. I do not know whether this film had any such antecedents, or whether it was first written and produced for cinematic release as a feature film, but it has no message and appears to be little more than an often very amusing collection of such vignettes. The thin thread linking these vignettes is that they show a series of incidents arising from the competing attempts by a married but feuding couple (who plan to divorce as soon as possible) to win a large cash reward which has been offered to either of them in return for the location of a missing man.

Is the film successful? This is probably best judged by how you would assess success for such a newspaper cartoon - the normal standards used in judging feature films do not seem very appropriate here. Many people turn to their newspaper cartoons for a light chuckle before they even look at the headlines, others never even 'see' this part of their paper, any more than they do the advertisements - regarding both as irrelevant and present only out of economic necessity. For the former group this is likely to be a very popular and successful film - the latter group are unlikely to even be aware of its existence, and in both cases this would be exactly what the film makers expected. It is certainly not a great film which will have critics raving as it unabashedly exploits as many different sexual situations as possible; but it is pure comedy as these situations have all been designed to be amusing rather than erotic. I felt that it was reasonably competently made, and it has no doubt brought a little welcome humour into the lives of many of those who have seen it. We cannot really expect any more than this, although we are still not likely to award the resulting film many bouquets. But then again all it would be likely to ask of us is to enjoy ourselves and avoid throwing brickbats!.

Naturally we are not talking great movie making here, but this little mid seventies French soft core is a very watch able and above average example of the type of film the French were making for a particular market in the early 70s. The girls are lovely, as are the costumes and with well photographed and attractive settings and interiors there is a good humoured feel to the whole. Fortunately we also get plenty of skin. Male and female and all of it pleasant to look at as one would expect from a nation who often made its porno look more like lingerie ads. The editing is diabolical, leading one to wonder if there were indeed once hardcore elements but it seems unlikely just badly cut down, probably to fit some double bill. Shame.