Histoire d’O (1975) - film review

To show her devotion to her boyfriend, René, a young woman named O allows him to take her to a country house where she is subjected to violent bondage and sado-masochistic sex with other men.  As one further test of her fidelity, René asks O to yield herself to the every desire of a close friend of his, the mysterious Sir Stephen...

It is rare to come across a softcore porn film which has anything approaching artistic merit.  Histore d’O is plausibly one such film which, despite its many other failings, does occasionally impress with its well-intended artistic pretensions.

The film was directed by Just Jaeckin who found fame in the early 1970s for his Emmanuelle films which are still widely viewed, often filling the late schedules of the less discriminating television channels. Histore d’O has acquired something of a legendary status as a  result of its ban in many countries (it was only deemed suitable for showing in the UK 25 years after it was made).

Certainly, there is a great deal of potentially shocking and sexually explicit material in the film.  From the start, naked young women are fully exposed in a variety of tantalising positions.  Many would consider the scenes where the women willingly allow themselves to be chained up and whipped quite distasteful, and is probably these scenes which prompted the heavy-handed censorship and bans.

Despite its clearly exploitative premise, the film manages to scrape together enough of a plot to engage, if not stimulate, the intellect.  There is something curiously believable, yet disturbing, in one woman’s willingness to subdue herself in the name of love.

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