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Sexually Yours
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray B - United Kingdom - 88 Films Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (2nd July 2025). |
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The Film
 In sexually-liberated seventies France, Gerard Casanova (Sexual Chronicles of a French Family's Yan Brian) prefers the women to come to him for seduction, so he is no gigolo but a self-proclaimed "call boy" (travel costs extra). He has some regulars like the dominatrix Baroness Desieux (Dear Inspector's Jacqueline Doyen) and her masochistic butler (Cop or Hood's Philippe Castelli), Olga who only makes love in the dark and whose face he has never seen, fun-loving Tina (Phantom of Liberty's Jenny Astruc), and widow Alice (Naked Sex's Valérie Boisgel) who likes recreate her last night of love with Gerard playing her late husband. He also has word-of-mouth referrals like Germaine (Clockwork Bananas' Dany Daniel) who summons him up to her hotel room while her husband (Sex Rally's Henri Génès) is at a conference but then winds up under the bed with the chambermaid when her husband returns and pops Gerard's aphrodisiac tonic. Most perplexing, however, is college student Celine (Sabine Rivolier) who may or may not be a virgin and is looking for a satisfying orgasm her contemporaries cannot provide. She has the money to string Gerard along and frustrate his natural talent for performance (both sexually and theatrically). He takes on tubby bartender Robert (L'essayeuse's Michel Vocoret) at first as a personal assistant to keep his appointment book, but Robert is a grower and soon proves to have charms and talents that prove disarming to some clients expecting a "young Casanova." When Celine reveals that she only plans to sleep with the man she will marry, Gerard may not be up to the challenge even no matter how much he may want it. Sexually Yours is an atypically light comic film from director Max Pécas who dabbled in various genres before his career-making works of seventies softcore erotica Her and She and Him, I am a Nymphomaniac and I Am Frigid... Why? that featured female protagonists from conservative backgrounds whose not-always-voluntary sexual awakenings are pathologized and exploited by various authority figures, with the pathologizing by different professional figures functioning to initially other/ostracize the protagonist and then to provide a path to the equilibrium of middle class respectability. Private Club made the same year shared some aspects with its handsome gigolo cabbie and Pécas-regular Vocoret (who also co-wrote both films) as his less attractive comic relief buddy who gets a taste of the action but it was within the framework of addressing the double standard when he discovers his fiancee is working in a high class rooftop brothel and spurns her despite experiencing a degree of coercion from the same couple who try to recruit him into their secret society. Sexually Yours is less critical in presenting its late twentieth-century Casanova as a prostitute at the beck and call of liberated women – housewives, widows, and single women who are anything but spinsters – for which his seduction is an amusement or diversion rather than his conquest and their dirty secret. Celine appears to be the first person to make a chink in his armor, getting him to talk about the pressure of living up to his ancestor and growing up surrounded by women – bathed as a child by admiring nannies and losing his virginity as a teenager to a chambermaid (The Perverse Countess' Tania Busselier) – but he is just as disturbed by Olga's desire never to see his face or him hers ("Light kills the illusion") and more so when he discovers that Alice's husband is very much alive and complicit in her charade as a widow who only desires to relive the past. Since this is a French seventies comedy, a bit of gay panic is what ultimately sends him rushing into Celine's arm's and Holy Matrimony, but she gets the last laugh leaving Gerard forever doubting whether she is as committed to him as he to her. Photographed by Pécas-regular Robert Lefebvre (The Image), the film is full of lavender gel-lighting, sexual gymnastics in low-key lighting, and plenty of diffusion and star filters in keeping with the aesthetic of his previous films that he would abandon for his two forays into hardcore pornography – Felicia and Luxure shot in both softcore and hardcore versions with some hardcore performers in the main cast and some inserts featuring body doubles – his string of light mainstream beach comedies in the early eighties as well as his return to the crime genre of his early years with the late eighties action film Brigade of Death. Less interesting than Pécas' earlier erotic works but not without its charms, that Sexually Yours plays like a softcore film whose sex scenes could be extended or augmented with hardcore inserts is indicative of the constraints under which Pécas was working in the genre as theatrical hardcore features supplanted most of the other low budget genres of French independent exploitation filmmaking from the mid-to-late seventies onward. 
Video
Released in an English-dubbed version in the U.K. as Sexually Yours by Border Films and as "Young Casanova" in the U.S. by Seaberg Film Distribution, Sexually Yours has been difficult to see in English-friendly form since then, first coming to Spain on DVD in a long out-of-print Pécas set of old video masters and then more recently in France on Blu-ray. 88 Films' 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.66:1 widescreen Blu-ray comes from the same master provided by rights owner/boutique label LCJ Éditions & Productions and it really looks no better or worse than their masters for the other Pécas films – including the U.S. Blu-ray double feature of I am a Nymphomaniac and I am Frigid… Why? (the sold out website-exclusive limited edition of which also included a bonus dsic featuring Private Club) and the previous 88 Films' Blu-rays of I am a Nymphomaniac and Private Club – with crushed blacks and blooming highlights while the lavender gel lighting is less smeary in high definition than it was on the old video master (which might have also been used on an earlier out-of-print French Pécas boxed set). Close-ups fare better, presenting a range of skin tones and Brian's faint laugh lines putting him well on the other side of thirty without stripping any of the older female cast of their screen glamour. Some of the darker scenes were always quite murky with backlighting and strobing gels, but here the viewer can almost see the Olga actress' features in the dark suggesting that her preference for the dark is psychological rather than due to some physical flaws). 
Audio
The sole audio option is a French LPCM 2.0 mono track. Everyone is post-dubbed and dialogue is the primary element in the mix which is clear enough given the age of the film and the likely low-budget post-production. We have no idea how much of the scoring of Derry Hall is new to the film but it stands out less than in the other Pécas films; however, we can still hear low in the mix that when Celine asks Gerard if he has any new music like David Bowie, the record he plays features "Right Side of the Road" the "conservative" anthem recorded for Pécas' earlier film Her and She and Him. Optional subtitles are free of any noticeable errors although it is unfortunate that the English dub could not be sourced as well. 
Extras
The sole extra is a still gallery (0:49). 
Overall
Less interesting than Max Pécas' earlier erotic works but not without its charms, that Sexually Yours plays like a softcore film whose sex scenes could be extended or augmented with hardcore inserts is indicative of the constraints under which Pécas was working in the genre as theatrical hardcore features supplanted most of the other low budget genres of French independent exploitation filmmaking from the mid-to-late seventies onward.
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