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I am a Nympomaniac
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray B - United Kingdom - 88 Films Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (14th December 2024). |
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The Film
 Having grown up with under a domineering father (What's New Pussycat's Richard Saint-Bris) and a passive mother (France-Noëlle), Carole (The Shiver of the Vampires' Sandra Julien) has come to fear and despise love as much as she feels revulsion at the idea of sexual pleasure and feeling trapped in her engagement to boring boyfriend Eric (Alain Hitier). When she catches sight of physician Michel (Patrick Verde), she feels an unfamiliar sense of "love at first sight" and accidentally falls down an elevator shaft. Although miraculously uninjured, Carole can no longer stifle her feelings of bodily arousal. She feels ashamed when Eric rebuffs her, surmising that she is a neurotic nymphomaniac, but when she gives in to the attentions of boss' sleazy nephew Olivier (The Night of the Three Lovers' Michel Vocoret), her boss and her family avoid scandal by sending Carole to the city to work in the shop of art dealer Murielle (Succubus' Janine Reynaud). Murielle also seduces Carole but what pleasure she feels is undercut by Murielle's cruelty as she inveigles the younger woman into an impromptu ménage à trois with client Bruno (Seven Women for Satan's Michel Lemoine) to close a business deal. After forcing herself on a female hitchhiker and having sex with a stranger in the lobby of her apartment building, Carole seeks help but finds no comfort from psychotherapy or religion. When Carole attempts suicide and winds up back in the care of Michel, he takes it upon himself to cure her; however, neither she nor he can be sure the intense feelings she has for him are that of the heart or the libido. The second of director Max Pécas's forays into softcore erotica following the early Elke Sommer vehicles Daniella by Night and Sweet Violence which were more melodramas than exploitation films and a series of low budget policiers with some added spice, I am a Nymphomaniac is a great vehicle for Julien and Reynaud but the story – co-authored by fellow softcore/hardcore erotica filmmaker Claude Mulot (Knife Under the Throat) – but like Pécas' other erotic films betrays a conservative bent, suggesting that the family unit is oppressive while uncontrolled lust is destructive. Carole is repressed by her background but once she discovers physical pleasure, she is "diagnosed" by her boyfriend, and she is sent away in order for her parents to avoid scandal and her fiance to save face at work (where he has started spreading rumors about her to justify ending their engagement). Murielle seems to offer liberation but only for her own amusement and profit while Carole becomes "predatory" because she lacks any knowledge of how to express her desires in a healthy manner. She initially seeks help from a female doctor (Patrice Dubois) who warns her agains the danger of self-diagnosis of terms she does not understand; but it takes a male doctor to say the same thing – suggesting that Carole is not in fact a nymphomaniac but has found it easier to take on that label due to her inability to articulate what she really feels – in consultation with a not-unsypathetic priest (Muriel's Yves Vincent) who nevertheless trivializes her crisis and directs her to find ways to distract herself, and the psychoanalytic sessions Michel subjects her to play like an inquisition. Like Jean Rollin, Pécas is able to utilize Julien's black expressions to convey the emptiness Carole feels even when facing temptation by attending a Bacchanalian orgy thrown by Murielle for the climax. The sequence involving Carole and the hitchhiker feels like a callback to Pécas' previous erotic film Her and She and Him since that film's protagonist hitchhiked her way to Paris, but that might be more due to composer Derry Hall recycling the instrumental version of his theme song for that film. 
Video
I am a Nymphomaniac was released under that title in 1972 by Howard Mahon followed by a reissued in 1973 by United International Pictures as "The Sensuous Teenager" and it became hard to see afterwards stateside while in the U.K. it received an X-certificate theatrical release (with cuts) followed by a 1988 VHS as "Night Pleasures" (presumably from the BBFC cut source). Pagam Films released the film on VHS and DVD with cuts restored in 2000 from a letterboxed video master. A new HD master made its Blu-ray debut in France last year while earlier this year Mondo Macabro put out an English-friendly limited edition double feature with the follow-up film I am Frigid… Why? (restoring material from the negative that was previously incorporated into the U.S. release "Let Me Love You" while some other material from that version was included in the extras since it could only be sourced from video) along with a bonus disc featuring Pécas' Private Club (which presumably will not be included in a standard edition). 88 Films' 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.66:1 widescreen Blu-ray utilizes the same master. The opening credits are a bit soft with "hot" red lettering but things improve afterwards, although this is most certainly the same source that has been used in the past (presumably the negative is lost) including a French remastered DVD that precede the Blu-ray. Blacks deeper than on video but shadow detail is still limited, skin tones look a bit less pink than on DVD and the reds are less noisy and more heated while the whites (including the odd jockstrap costuming during the orgy) reveal detail where they once bloomed. While it does not look perfect, the transfer does restore a sense of visual pizzazz that was always more understated in Pécas' films compared to his contemporaries. 
Audio
French and English LPCM 2.0 mono audio options are included. Presumably the cleaner French track came from the licensor while the English track was sourced from the earlier video master. Dialogue in intelligible in both but the English has a bit more hiss in the silences. Optional English subtitles reveal the differences in names – including some characters not even named on the English dub – but the English dub is relatively faithful to the French (also post-dubbed). 
Extras
While 88 Films sadly could not include the Eurotika! TV special on Pécas included on the U.S. version, they appear to have an exclusive in "Flirting With Genres" (19:19), an interview with film historian Christophe Bier seemingly not ported over from the French edition. Bier discusses how Pécas' earlier films were policiers with some novelty nudity but the influence of Scandinavian imports meant that sex itself could be the subject of a film, and Pécas chose to do melodramas in which sex was a problem, Her and She and Him being about homosexuality, I am a Nympomaniac about nymphomania, and I am Frigid… Why? being about frigidity. Bier notes that films' conservative attitude with the heroine being dissatisfied, an absurd catalyst, a period of uncontrolled lust, and the restoration of the social order with Julien's heroine rejecting an oppressive father and seeking more understanding authoritarian figures before finding safety in marriage. Bier also discusses Julien's short career and how French erotic filmmakers adapted to hardcore filmmaking – with Pécas the only one to direct a few under his own name – and Bier being complimentary of Pécas' two works Luxure and Felicia (both of which ended up released in both hardcore and softcore versions). Bier is less enthusiastic about Pécas' later films which were largely summer comedies with reduced erotic elements but notes that he went out with a bang with the gory, violent policier Brigade of Death. 
Overall
Max Pécas' I am a Nymphomaniac is ostensibly about the "problem" of nymphomania but also reveals the hypocrisy of the social order in spite of its own conservative answer. 
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