Luca Damiano takes off on Tinto Brass's classic SALON KITTY with LILI, a hardcore porn feature that injects elements of LILI MARLEEN as well. It's one of his best shot-on-video features.
One-shot porn star Marina Montero is appealing in the title role, a cabaret singer at the outset of World War II who is dismayed at the "casting couch" type exigencies of show biz. Rather than submit to the sleazy come-on of impresario Jean-Yves Le Castel, who insists that sampling his big dick is a prerequisite to employment, she is luckily taken under the wing of sympathetic brothel madam Kitty.
Lili gets a job serving drinks at the brothel, where soldiers and big shots have sex with a bevy of beauties. Feeling left out (and this is porn, after all), she asks Kitty to let her join the ranks of prostitutes.
Really stealing the show in the plum Kitty role, Baby Nielsen shows Lili the ropes, and her lesbian sex tutelage is sensual and arousing. Damiano uses interesting camera angles, slo-mo and careful lighting techniques to fashion an alluring video -with sumptuous settings and costumes. It stands in marked contrast to the slapdash treatments of the same material by his compatriot Joe D'Amato.
Presented in U.S. DVD release thankfully with its original Italian soundtrack (and English subtitles), the picture is non-violent. That is the biggest departure from earlier versions of the story, as one would never know the Nazis were involved. There is the use of some stock footage to suggest the WW II backdrop, but when Lili's young soldier lover (sympathetic porn thesp Francesco Malcom) is sent to the front one doesn't even question which side he's fighting on. This being early in the war, all the film's protagonists are in fact the "bad guys" -Axis powers, but the story is played straight ahead, with no revisionism or mea culpas.
Besides the two sexy heroines, always reliable Anita Dark has a couple of quality sex scenes, and a uniformly attractive cast also showcases such talented performers as the late Karen Lancaume (she of BAISE-MOI fame) and lovely Eva Falk.
NOTE: Star with name re-spelled Mantero recently returned (2016) to the screen as a mature lady in a wonderful story-line feature as title roler "Donna Matilde", highly recommended.
