La Bonne (1986)

becomes a nasty little contest over who is using whom. Director Salvatore Samperi plainly wants more than a parade of naked bodies: he pokes at bourgeois hypocrisy, class resentment, repression and the way sexual liberation can become another method of control. He does not always dig deeply enough, and the performances can be stiff, but the central reversal is effective. What begins as a mildly naughty awakening gradually develops a colder edge, with humiliation, voyeurism and cruelty creeping into the bedroom. Riz Ortolani’s music and Camillo Bazzoni’s handsome photography give the film a polished, melancholy surface, even when the script is behaving like a particularly dirty issue of an old continental men’s magazine.

The setting is postwar northern Italy, shortly after the Hungarian uprising of 1956, though world politics mostly remains background noise while private revolution breaks loose upstairs. The Catholic respectability of provincial Veneto matters far more: men discuss public affairs while women stew behind closed doors, surrounded by lace, dark wood, sick relatives and rules nobody follows when the curtains are drawn. The film was shot in Vicenza itself, using its arcaded streets, old façades, narrow lanes and nearby countryside rather than hiding inside anonymous studio scenery. Recognisable locations include the porticoes near Piazzetta Palladio, Contrà Riale, Contrà Piancoli and the Church of San Lorenzo. These elegant spaces make Anna’s confinement feel strangely luxurious, while the rural excursions provide a humid, earthy contrast to her buttoned-up household. The vibe is languid 1980s Italian softcore dressed in 1950s stockings: slow, glossy, slightly dusty and more interested in erotic tension than narrative speed. It is less a great social drama than a decadent chamber piece about boredom acquiring teeth.

Florence Guérin plays Anna as a dark-haired French bombshell squeezed into the role of the dutiful bourgeois wife, all wide eyes, ripe curves and barely contained restlessness. Her acting is not especially subtle, but her gradual change from hesitant observer to eager participant gives the film its pulse. Danish blonde Trine Michelsen makes Angela a cheeky, watchful provocateur whose fresh-faced prettiness conceals a talent for pushing buttons—until she discovers that sexual games do not erase the class pecking order. Neither woman is delivering Shakespeare, but Samperi knew exactly why the camera adored them, and he makes generous use of that knowledge. The erotic content is substantial for mainstream softcore: prolonged nudity, lesbian play, masturbation, voyeuristic games, simulated sex, a threesome and hints of sadomasochism, all photographed with glossy rather than hardcore intent. It is saucy, frequently perverse and occasionally disturbing—a film in which the corsets come off long before the social masks do.

Official synopsis: Anna, the beautiful wife of a busy lawyer, feels neglected by her husband and grows closer to their maid, Angela. The maid convinces Anna to try increasingly daring erotic games.

Fact: The only reason to watch this terribly directed, incoherent story is ‘The Beautiful Wife’, French Beauty Florence Guérin. You see her on screen and you realize that Nothing needs to make sense.