Cecilia

It is know that Jesus Franco did his fair share of total waste of time films. By that i mean films that dont have no reedeming qualities whatsoever. He also did a lot of very good ones and i like him a lot but Cecilia is not one of the good ones. This film is basically Emanuelle. That by itself is a huge disapointment for Jesus Franco enthusiasts because Emanuelle sucks really bad. But not only that this film is Emanuelle WITHOUT Sylvia Kristel and no one as interesting or charismatic to fill the gap. Lina Romay has a role in it but its quite insignificant. She has something like 5 minutes of screen time in total and even if she had more i doubt that it would be enough to make this one worthwile. The plot is very uniteresting, the soundtrack is very stock, the lead actress has no charisma, the locations are not particularly interesting either, some scenes go on forever (like the one where we see cecilia going back and forth horseback riding on the beach. And also it is way too long for its own good. Maybe if it was something close to 80 minutes it would be a little more tolerable but it isnt and it aint.

Cecilia (Muriel Montossé, Isla the warden from Love Camp and Emmanuelle in Emmanuelle Exposed) is the wife of a rich diplomat named Andre (Antonio Mayans) and she's bored by all of it. So filled with ennui that she often stages games when she gets * in front of the servants and trying to seduce him, which backfires when their limo driver quits and his brothers all gang up to assault her. This being an exploitation movie, that sexual violence is all that she needed to reawaken herself, both to wanting carnal pleasure and her husband. And, as these things happen in movies that follow the journey of Emanuelle, she soon embraces her free love nature and begins to explore being open to the ways of amour. But it always seems that in exploitation that too much of a good thing must be morally punished, right? Aberraciones sexuales de una mujer casada (Sexual Aberrations of a Married Woman) was acquired by Eurociné, who had Olivier Mathot direct new flashback scenes, and released the movie as Ceceilia, which is the easier to find version of this film. There's * horseback riding, a cave-set multiperson love scene and, in case you forgot Jess Franco directed this, Lina Romay playing a nightclub dancer who does an act in which she sucks her son's thumb in a way that leaves nothing to your imagination. Some people would say that this is problematic; I'd say it's a Jess Franco movie. When the Nationalist government of General Francisco Franco fell, years of making movies that only flirted with kink suddenly gave way to a tidal way of needing to show everything, to expose it, to confess it and then to cover it up with droning synth and shots of the scenery that seemingly always last way too long. I'd say never change, but Jess Franco never did.

Cecilia (Muriel Montosse) Likes to tease her staff by parading her body before them but one day this backfires and she is raped by three of them. Far from complaining, Cecilia goes swimming with them and then takes this as an opportunity to see how far she can go. she wastes no time in engaging her husband to further sexual adventures which include extra-marital affairs and threesomes. It all unravels when her husband tires of her wild abandon. For a Jess Franco film, the rapes are fairly subdued with the one near the end having the camera pan away quite quickly. The sex scenes have a tenderness that for me, are not typical of Jess Franco. Why is it that when people are having sex on a four-poster bed, the director insists on having one of the posts in camera shot? It is amazing and annoying the number of times that just when a sex scene gets going, there appears a table lamp or a vase or a statuette to spoil it all. Apart from this gripe, the film has a rich lush look by the choice of locations: large country estates with lush gardens and a wild beach scene where Cecilia rides naked on her horse. To sum up then, not your usual Jess Franco sleaze-fest; actually a beautifully filmed love story. Incidentally, in certain shots, Muriel Montosse bears a striking resemblance to Geri Halliwell of The Spice Girls. There is nudity and sex aplenty but done with a view to eroticism rather than shock. A film that should be seen, not just by Franco fans but by anyone who cares for good cinema.