MY BODY BURNS

(A.k.a. DOSSIER EROTIQUE D'UN NOTAIRE; EROTISME A' L'ETUDE)

The film begins with curvaceous Jamie Lee Curtis-lookalike Evelyne (Evelyne Scott) taking a telephone call from disgruntled pals Annie and Marie-Francis, questioning her relationship with elderly notary Mr Sands (Georges Gueret). They know he's wealthy and that that's the reason Evelyne is with him. Marie-Francis owes money to the old man, and Evelyne is asked to help her out. Evelyne refuses to help, preferring to look after her own interests. So Annie gets on the blower and threatens to tell Michelle, Evelyne's lesbian lover, about the affair. "Blackmail!" Evelyne sharply deduces.

Next we meet Betty, who boasts to her sister Michelle (Angela Hansen) about the elderly man named Frederick who she's sleeping with - purely to get her hands on his money. The ruthless Betty is also unapologetic about her own mercenary attitude, while questioning Michelle's desire for another woman. But Michelle is adamant that she and Evelyne are totally in love - and nothing like marriage will ever come between them, because they both loathe and despise men. Ah, little does she know ...!

When Sands invites Evelyne to move into his new mansion with her, she sees it as a chance to wave ta-ta to a life of poverty once and for all. She wastes little time in telling Michelle - mid-lesbian fumble, no less - that she wants to marry the old man.

Oh dear. Michelle doesn't take this news at all well - it turns out that she actually knew of the affair but thought it was over a long time ago. When Evelyne declines Michelle's pleas to dump the old fellow with a blasé reasoning of "I want to be rich", Michelle hits back by threatening to tell the whole town - and Evelyne's manipulative mother - of the affair, including some of Sands' darkest secrets.

Evelyne rushes to meet Sands in the woods and tells him about Michelle's threats. "What a bitch!" he snaps, and suggests the girl needs a good beating to knock some sense into her. But Evelyne's already tried that - Michelle ended up loving it.

It seems they have a dilemma on their hands, as both need each other: Evelyne is prepared to marry Sands for his cash, while he is concerned that his reputation as a pervert and Lothario is bad in terms of local business deals. He wants Evelyne by his side to show people he's settled down - even though he knows she only fucks him to satisfy her own monetary needs.

After the erection-challenged Sands performs cunnilingus on his young mistress in the woods, he puts across the suggestion of killing Michelle to solve their problems ...

Meanwhile Michelle meets with her Dad and confides her true feelings for Evelyne. Naturally, he fails to understand this concept - but she will not be swayed and Dad seems pretty resigned to that fact by the end of the conversation.

Later, Michelle meets with Evelyne and offers her some of her father's money. But, as the two take a stroll through their small town, Evelyne turns the offer down while Sands plots elsewhere to get Michelle to his chateau on false pretences. With a big property deal on the horizon, and locals already whispering under their breath about orgies being held at his mansion, the last thing Sands needs is Michelle exposing his sleazier side ...

Based loosely upon a true story, the film benefits from some attractive cinematography and roving hand-held tracking shots. Writer-director Jean-Marie Pallardy has an eye for delicious local scenery, as well as an agreeable penchant for naked female flesh at regular intervals. It's hard not to enjoy in this respect.

However, the sex scenes are decidedly flat in their delivery. Shot in uninspired fashion, these softcore trysts are tediously tame and suffer from poor editing (not cuts, I must add). Furthermore, the use of clumsy panpipe muzak on the score heightens the wince factor.

The film moves along slowly but steadily, offering more storyline and slightly less flesh than EROTIC DIARY OF A LUMBERJACK did. It's more coherent than that film in terms of plot, but doesn't hold up to repeated viewings as well. It also suffers from a wildly uneven pace.

By the latter half of the film, Pallardy has even resorted to weak philosophical attempts at exploring the difference between loving a man and a woman. It's pretentious hokum ("man is brutal and vulgar") that predictably, for a film of it's era, ends in downbeat fashion.

Still, the two scenes where Michelle gets a whipping from Evelyne's belt - and enjoys it - are stand-outs in terms of fetishist eroticism. Also, look out for Pallardy in a cameo as a local barman Ivan who helps put crazy notions into the scheming Sands' head (as if he needs them).

Scott, of course, will be a familiar face to fans of Euro-Horror: she also features in Jess Franco's NIGHT OF THE ASSASSINS, the Paul Naschy-starrer THE MAN WITH THE SEVERED HEAD and THE DEVIL'S KISS.

The film is presented uncut in an extremely satisfying non-anamorphic 1.66:1 transfer. Detail is sharp in general, with most softness looking to be purposely rendered by the filmmakers - in that good old-fashioned softcore style. Colours are strong throughout, and images remain bright. Blacks waver a little in darker scenes and the odd speck is present here and there, but this presentation - derived from elements provided by Pallardy himself, represent what is fair to assume is the best the film will most likely ever look.

English audio is presented in a nice 2.0 mix. The dialogue here is clearer and louder than on the EROTIC DIARY OF A LUMBERJACK disc, and the amount of background noise (hiss, chiefly) is kept to a minimum. As with the LUMBERJACK disc, there is no optional original French audio. Again, this is a shame - especially considering the director's involvement in this disc. The English dubbing is pretty good to be honest, especially for a film of this age (1972). But even so, it's no substitute for the original language soundtrack.

An animated main menu opens the disc, perhaps implying with it's blue hues and close-up montage of women groaning in pleasure, that the audience are getting a dirtier movie than what's on offer.

There is no scene-selection menu but the film can be navigated through by way of 7 chapters.

Extras are good, but would have been better if I had not already viewed the excellent EROTIC DIARY OF A LUMBERJACK disc. Why? Read on ...

As with the LUMBERJACK disc, extras on the disc begin with a sterling 61-minute career-encompassing interview with Pallardy, entitled "The Erotic Journal of Jean-Marie Pallardy". It's actually listed on this disc as "Interview: The Erotic Diary of Jean-Marie Pallardy" - but it is the same extra.

Anyhow ...

This excellent documentary finds the white-haired director speaking to the off-screen Nicolas Felgerolles in relaxed manner about his career at length. He chats affably about how he was a farmer prior to breaking into the industry via short films, and about how most of his films were financed by Italians.

Pallardy is honest enough to talk about the bits of his films that don't work, as well as blaming his own direction for some of the actors' less impressive performances. Elsewhere, Pallardy explains why he shies away from hardcore sex ("I don't want people to smell all of the nauseous odours of sex").

Interspersed throughout the enjoyable, well-edited and entertaining featurette are windowboxed clips from several Pallardy films, including LUMBERJACK, UNSATISFIED, MY BODY BURNS, NAKED AND LUSTFUL, A VERY SPECIAL WOMAN and AN EROTIC JOURNAL OF A LADY FROM THAILAND (which affords the opportunity to enjoy some naked Brigitte Lahaie, as well as listen to Pallardy's own memories of first meeting her).

The interview segments of the documentary are presented in anamorphic 1.78:1. The whole documentary boasts French 2.0 audio with optional English subtitles. Remote access allows you to flick through the featurette by way of 9 chapters.

Next up we get original trailers for MY BODY BURNS, LUCKY LUCKY & THE DALTINES, GUNFIGHT AT THE OQ CORRAL, EROTIC DIARY OF A LUMBERJACK and TRUCK STOP. Yep, the very same trailers that also feature as bonus material on the LUMBERJACK disc! All are presented in non-enhanced widescreen with French audio and no subtitles.

Finally, there's a superb gallery of stills from Pallardy's personal archives, offering 100 photographs over the course of almost 13 minutes. There is a lot more softcore footage to be enjoyed here, as the gallery runs the course of several Pallardy films. However, it would've been nice if this well-edited feature was accompanied by audio of some description. If you feel like you've seen this gallery before, that's because you have: it too is also featured on the LUMBERJACK disc ...

All in all, Le Chat Qui Fume has given the film a very solid uncut release. It's a crying shame that the original French audio track hasn't been included on the main feature, but I suppose we should be grateful to see this film available on such a good-looking and generous English-friendly disc.

Not an essential film, but an interesting one. I expected it to play out like a bastard cousin of Fernando Di Leo's brilliant 1978 film AVERE VENT'ANNI (TO BE TWENTY). But it falls well short of that pleasure. Even so, this comes with a recommendation to the more curious DVD hunter.

Review by Stuart Willis