Vanessa

Dir: Hubert Frank
Star: Olivia Pascal, Anton Diffring, Uschi Zech, Günter Clemens

Ah, the joys of 70's porno, and a film that desperately wants to be Emmanuelle, right down to the wicker chair. Or perhaps Emmanuelle: The Joys of a Woman, since it nicks the Hong Kong setting for its tale of the sexual awakening of a convent schoolgirl (though given this upbringing, she's curiously amenable to sensual massages). Either way, this borders on incoherent, and not just because it's in German: I'm prepared to bet a lot of scenes simply explained, such as the one where a guy shoots holes in rice sacks above a dancing naked woman. There are a lot of close-ups of statues, because...just because, right?

Such surreal weirdness is the main reason to watch, though Pascal, later in Borowczyk's Behind Convent Walls, is certainly photogenic. Co-star Diffring looks vaguely embarrassed to be there, and who wouldn't with songs on the soundtrack whose lyrics go: "Vanessa...you are the girl in my dreams...Vanessa...you're haunting all my reveries..." If they use this once, they use it half-a-dozen times, and let me tell you, it doesn't get better with repetition. If I could quote the dialogue, it'd probably be an Incredibly Bad Film Show candidate -- instead, I'll just quietly forget to assign this one a rating...

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