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  Maîtresse Spanks Very Much
Year: 1975
Director: Barbet Schroeder
Stars: Gérard Depardieu, Bulle Ogier, André Rouyer, Nathalie Keryan, Roland Bertin, Tony Taffin, Holger Löwenadler, Anny Bartanovski, Serge Berry, Richard Caron, Pierre Devos, Jeanne Herviale, Michel Pilorgé, Cecile Pochet
Genre: Sex, RomanceBuy from Amazon
Rating:  6 (from 2 votes)
Review: Olivier (Gérard Depardieu) meets up with his friend Mario (André Rouyer) in Paris to set about making money by selling art books door to door. Mario has ulterior motives for doing so, however, as he hopes to also work out which apartments are lying empty with their owners gone for a few days, and therefore opportunistically break in and help himself to whatever valuables he might find. Olivier is reluctant, but after helping Ariane (Bulle Ogier) with her overflowing bath Mario notices the apartment below is empty and they break in - to be greeted with a surprise.

When Barbet Schroeder made Maîtresse he had a reputation of never settling for the normal subjects that most would traditionally choose to create their movies, a reputation that he gradually lost, but his early works still command a cult following no matter how conventional he apparently he turned out to be later on. This was on the surface a romance, a genre that often saw very commonly applied methods and storytelling, yet what intrigued audiences of the day - audiences who could see this uncut, of course - was the setting, a sadomasochistic dungeon and the classy apartment above it where Ariane lived.

Talking of cults of the seventies, here were two stars who were gaining quite some measure of attention in Depardieu and Ogier, although only one of them went on to be a true global superstar. That's not to say that Depardieu ever lost his taste for the more envelope-pushing works that caught his fancy, but he still balanced those with the mainstream, and not simply that of his native France. Ogier continued to appear in moves too, but now that her heyday (of which Maîtresse was assuredly part) had past, it was pretty much only the film buffs who recalled her outside of her home country. But return to those movies she made at the start of her career and for some years afterwards and there was plenty to interest.

Here a not quite comfortable relationship is kicked off when Ariane walks in on Olivier and Mario trying to rob her but finding that they have no use for such items as rubber fetish gear, whips, or a naked old man in a cage. But she has a use for Olivier, persuading him with a large sum of money to participate in the paid humiliation of one of her clients, and Olivier is immediately hooked on her personality, having never met anyone like her before. Not that he actually subjects himself to the S&M business, as he's far more hopeful of a fruitful romance, but that unusual nature of the object of his affection's job is what proves an obstacle to their lasting happiness, or so it seems.

Actually there's not too much of Ariane explaining herself and her chosen profession as a dominatrix: we have to accept that she's happy to beat her clients, chain them up, crucify them and in one eyewatering scene hammer nails into one chap's manhood, and the power that it gives her is enough to make her feel as if she has not been wasting her time. You can see why the idea of such a petite, fragile-looking blonde turning dominatrix would appeal to a certain type of man, but we have to do a lot of reading between the lines to understand that these men (and women, occasionally) who see her are already powerful in their lives and wish to sacrifice that in safe conditions. Olivier, excluded, gets jealous in his way, and proceeds to sabotage the affair by trying to gain the upper hand himself, but there is an ending that for many spoils the careful, kinky mood of what we've just seen with a frankly silly happy denouement. In its manner Maîtresse both went too far and not far enough. Music by Carlos D'Alessio.
Reviewer: Graeme Clark

 

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