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I Am Frigid... Why?
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray B - United Kingdom - 88 Films Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (26th August 2025). |
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The Film
 The daughter of the gardener (Sins of the Flesh's Georges Guéret) of a country estate, blossoming Doris (The Shiver of the Vampires' Sandra Julien) is a "diamond of the purist water" ripe for the plucking by teenage Erik (Jean-Luc Terrade) at the encouragement of his incestuous sister Carla (Grapes of Death's Marie-Georges Pascal) who chase her down and rape her in the greenhouse. Erik's mother (Montparnasse 19's Arlette Poirier) is eager to pin the blame on Doris despite her father's claims that she was a virgin. For the price of his and Doris' silence, Erik's father (Justine de Sade's Robert Lombard) arranges for Doris to go way to the same expensive finishing school Carla once attended in hopes of better future prospects. Doris is ostracized by most of her rich schoolmates apart from her roommate Lea (Don't Deliver Us from Evil's Catherine Wagener). During a thunderstorm, she allows Lea into her bed and under the covers but Doris realizes that she feels no pleasure from the act. After they graduate, Doris returns home but remains friends with Lea who takes her out to the theatre where she is charmed by actor/director Luc (Erotica mon amour's Thierry Murzeau) and impulsively takes a job as script girl for the touring show. Arriving in Paris, she has nowhere to stay so Luc allows her to use his bed while he bunks with a friend in the apartment above; however, one night they must share a bed. Doris is open to it initially but she is soon inundated by traumatic flashbacks and has to finally admit aloud to her "frigidity." Although Luc is promises to be patient and wants to teach her how to make love, Doris bristles at his extracurricular interest in actress Lina (Frédérique Aubrée) who is "uncomplicated." Feeling like she is actually the burden on Luc, Doris leaves and takes up a position at a property rental company where she catches the eye of nymphomaniac client Eva (Anne Kerylen) who tells her that frigidity can be a weapon rather than a weakness and she can get what she wants even if it is just a husband and children. When Doris learns from Patricia (Trans-Europ-Express' Virginie Vignon) that Eva is the madame of a call girl agency, Doris decides that making love to a quantity of men might eventually lead to finding the right one; however, when one of her clients turns out to be Erik's father, Doris realizes that she must probe inward and confront the past. Although only a year had passed between director Max Pécas' I am a Nyphomaniac and his follow-up, star Julien had been around the world in the meantime – more on that in the discussion of the disc extras – and Pécas again problematizes extramarital sexuality in a woman with a traumatic first experience, and once again leans on psychoanalysis with the blunter message here that Doris just needs to find a real man (and the idea that Doris' rape was "more" traumatic because she was in love with her assailant). While Pécas' ideal is still domestic respectability – even lesbian Lea is shown later married and pregnant – he is at least a bit harder here on the older generation and the upper-middle class in suggesting that their model is not the one from which to take an example. Despite the title, Julien's protagonist gets a lot of action, and the title itself might have turned audiences off to it which may be why Pécas turned towards lighter-toned sexploitation as the seventies went on with films like Young Casanova and Private Club (the latter still concerned with predatory sexuality but calling into question gender double standards) before dabbling in hardcore with Felicia and Sweet Taste of Honey before moving on to youth holiday beach comedies for a wider audience. Doris' call girl episodes are generally played for humor – at least in the French cut but more on that below – with some unconventional under-the-table action, some spanking, and an undercranked "Oriental" orgy involving a transvestite, all captured by Pécas regular cinematographer Robert Lefebvre (The Image) with his trademark canted angles, color gels, and kaleidoscope filters and sometimes inappropriately-scored by Derry Hall (Her and She and Him). Julien keeps things afloat with a performance that allows her to show off her emotional range along with what else viewers were expecting to see laid bare on camera and she is ably supported by an attractive supporting cast including turns from later Euro-sexploitation performers like Joëlle Coeur (Les demoniaques) and Gilda Arancio (Schoolgirl Hitchhikers) in too small roles. 
Video
I am Frigid… Why? was released in France with a running time of 97 minutes and then theatrically in the United States by Radley Metzger's Audubon Films under both I am Frigid… Why? and as "Let Me Love You" running ninety-four minutes. While there were trims to the dialogue and for pacing, the U.S. version included footage shot for the film but not used in the French version including a five-and-a-half minute scene which explains why Luc is dressed in period clothing as he plays the Marquis de Sade and tortures a bunch of chained women before the curtain goes down and comes back up for the audience participation on-stage dancing scene present in both cuts. The Sade footage is strong stuff for the early seventies but not including it in the French cut makes it appear more prudish considering the U.S. exoticitization (or eroticization) of the French during this period. The U.S. version also included a two vignettes during Doris' stint as a call girl including one where she whips a man on a leash playing a dog and a lesbian threesome. The lesbian threesome is scored with a library track that Metzger would also use during the "climax" of his later film Score, and that track replaces the original cues in the U.S. version during the brighter onscreen rendering of Doris' thunderstorm scene (darkned in the French verison) with Lea as well as her later encounter with Eva. The "Let Me Love You" version was released on VHS in the U.S. by Private Screenings while the I am Frigid… Why? version was released by First Run Features, the only difference being that the latter was letterboxed (actually windowboxed but TV overscan would only have shown the top and bottom mattes) while the former was cropped. A significantly shorter cut was released on VHS in the U.K. in 1989 as "Sex Mad" while Pagan Films' 2000 Eurotika DVD featured the French version in English but was subjected to twenty-seven seconds of cuts to the rape scene. The French master was "unmolested" when it turned up on DVD in Spain as part of a Pécas set and then got an HD remaster in 2024 when it was released on Blu-ray in France. The aforementioned French HD master made its English-friendly debut in the U.S. from Mondo Macabro first in a limited edition with I am a Nymphomaniac and a bonus Blu-ray featuring Private Club and then a standard edition that dropped the bonus disc. Mondo Macabro's cut of the film on that release ran 100:38, incorporating the two call girl vignettes from the export version – as such the French track reverts to English for those scenes (the French Blu-ray lists a running time of 97 minutes so presumably the material was included as a supplement – and 88 Films has done the same with their 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.66:1 widescreen Blu-ray which runs 100:42. The newer transfer boasts more vibrant colors, deeper blacks, and what seemed like faded red gels during the encounter between Doris and Luc on the older transfers is hot pink and distinct from Luc's red terrycloth robe's hue. The thunderstorm sequence has been darkened in keeping with the original French release and either the encode or the French owner LCJ's own mastering struggles with these darkest bits with some faint ghosting as seen on 88 Films' Blu-ray of Naked Sex (we have not seen the Mondo Macabro disc to compare). 
Audio
Audio options include English and French LPCM 2.0 mono audio tracks, both post-dubbed. The English track reverts to French for a snippet of the opening rape scene which was fully in English on the First Run tape release while the French track reverts to English for the two call girl vignette bits. A full English subtitle track is provided for the French track. 
Extras
While Mondo Macabro included the bits exclusive to the American version in context in a deleted scenes extra, 88 Films' sole extra is "The Indelible Sandra Julien" (9:05), a visual essay by film historian Chris O'Neill who notes that while Julien continued acting into the late seventies and eighties, her peak period as a lead actress was 1971 to 1972 in which the model was recommended by her film technician husband to Jean Rollin to take the lead in Shiver of the Vampires – her husband would body double himself in a sex scene shot for the export version of the film – following a smaller part in Paul Vecchiali's The Strangler. She next appeared in Pécas' I am a Nyphomaniac which was a hit in Japan where Toei invited her over to appear in both The Insatiable and Tokugawa Sex Band in both of which she played characters named "Sandra". This was followed by her return to France for the lead in the French sexploitation film Ravishing Dany which allowed her to stretch her comedic chops as well before I am Frigid, Why? which Pécas surmised was a flop on the basis of the title alone. 
Overall
While audiences of the time turned away from I am Frigid… Why? on the basis of its title alone, newcomers can rest assured that the protagonist gets a lot of action.
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