Erotissimo (1969)
Directed by Gérard Pirès

Film Review

Gérard Pirès is best known as the director of Taxi (1998), the first (and best) in a series of phenomenally successful turbo-charged comedies produced by Luc Besson.   This film marked Pirès's belated return to directing after more than a decade working in advertising (he is reputed to have made around 400 publicity films).  The irony of this is that in his first feature, Erotissimo (1969), Pirès delivered the most virulent attack on the demon art of advertising.  Not content with gunning down the ad men with a Tarantino-like ferocity, the film also sinks its razor-sharp fangs into the sexploitation phenomenon that erupted in the mid-60s, whilst making the usual anti-establishment noises you would expect to find in a French comedy of this era.  This was, after all, a film made in the turbulent year of 1968, so it was unlikely to end up looking like an episode of Terry and June (or whichever bland middleclass sitcom you'd care to name).

One of the most important producers of the Nouvelle Vague, Pierre Braunberger was the obvious backer for Pirès's eccentric debut feature, particularly as it resembled something by one of his most prominent protégés, Jean-Luc Godard.  With its frenzied jump cutting, vivid use of pop art and general sense of unbridled lunacy, Erotissimo could easily be mistaken for one of Godard's films, and the only thing that convinces us otherwise is its total lack of restraint.  Not even Godard, in his wilder moments, could have put together something as zanily anarchic as this.  It's also much funnier than any film that this pillar of the French New Wave ever unleashed on us, but then, to be fair, Godard never got to direct a film with Jean Yanne and Francis Blanche, two of French cinema's comedy icons.  (Not long before this, Yanne had featured in Godard's Week End, a somewhat bleaker anti-everything romp.)

For a film that is so stylistically over the top, it seems scarcely plausible that it essentially boils down to a straightforward comedy in which an insecure housewife - Annie Girardot at her comedic best - tries to spice up her marriage with a businessman - Jean Yanne - whose attentions are presently being monopolised by his tax inspector - Francis Blanche.  (Put like that, it sounds uncannily like an episode of Terry and June...)  Stimulated by some lurid posters, a brand of cooking fat (extra virgin, of course) and a very dodgy Swedish movie (in which incest is promoted as the next in-thing), Girardot surrenders herself to the new era of permissiveness and becomes a rampant sexpot.  Unfortunately, Yanne is too busy dealing with his muddled tax affairs to profit from his wife's sexual liberation, so Girardot ends up having a meaningless fumble with Italian stud Venantino Venantini whilst Yanne spends his evenings ploughing through invoices and feeding baby food to Blanche.  It could only happen in a French film of the 1960s.

The high point is when Girardot puts on her riding gear and sings a sexy musical number entitled La femme faux-cils.  (If only this had been entered into the 1969 Eurovision song contest it would have given France a decisive victory, instead of the four-way tie with Britain, the Netherlands and Spain.  Next to Girardot's kinky number, complete with riding crop,  Lulu's Boom Bang-a-Bang wouldn't have got a look in.)  Whilst we're on the musical theme, Serge Gainsbourg makes a brief cameo appearance as a fully paid up member of the 'dirty mac' brigade, although his attempts to lure Girardot back to his place to see his collection of 'art' films prove futile.  It was around this time that Gainsbourg released his most notorious single with Jane Birkin - Je t'aime, moi non plus.   Soixante-neuf really was a filthy year.

To gain a full appreciation of what things were like in France in the late 1960s, you could either go to the time and expense of building yourself a time machine or you could just sit down and watch Erotissimo.  With its Gatling gun editing, psychedelic score and retina-scorching use of colour, Pirès's film positively wallows in the trippy tastelessness of its time, but it provides a stinging critique of the decade's tawdry commercialism, evidenced by its blatant sexualisation of women and nauseous permissiveness.  There is also a palpable sense of the numbing alienation that was felt by most of the population at the time, as the De Gaulle presidency came tumbling down and the establishment and commerce became easy targets for a disillusioned and disenfranchised nation.  How France managed to avoid descending into outright anarchy is anyone's guess, but Pirès's madcap film gives a real sense of how close the country came to this.

Film Synopsis

Annie and Philippe are a young married couple who appear to have a perfectly satisfactory love life.  Then, one day, Annie is prompted by an article to ask herself if she is living up to her marital responsibilities.  It seems that the modern woman must be more erotically minded than her forebears.  Without delay, Annie sets about making herself more sexually alluring for her husband, but he seems to be completely oblivious to her efforts.   The owner of a business specialising in baby products, Philippe is far too preoccupied with an impromptu visit from a tax inspector to notice his wife's wild fling with eroticism...