Sexploitation week continues at the Hell-A-Go-Go!
If exploitation trades in sleaziness via horrific acts of violence perpetrated against its characters; sexploitation is the same, albeit replacing horrific acts of violence with copious amounts of boobies. The horror of it all! The normally omnipresent sleaziness of exploitation is ramped up. Less voyeurism and more exhibitionism; sexploitation is the attention whore of the exploitation sub-mode.
Frivolous Lola is more Italian goodness from the land of terrible movies. Actually, I'm being unfair with that statement: where Italy may be (on average) the land of terrible movies, Frivolous Lola is not one of these terrible movies. The director, fabled peddler of smut Tinto Brass has directed one of the most terrible movies ever made though: Caligula!
Lola is everything a movie like Caligula is not; namely actually erotic. Brass is a director of very specific tastes. He likes soft focus and fog (a lot); he has an obsession with posteriors as close-ups or long takes of naked female ass or liberally strewn through out the movie; also has an equally strong obsession with women wearing skirts with no underwear and either inadvertently or purposefully (usually the latter) flashing unsuspecting males; and finally, and most importantly to this film, Brass enjoys a sense of burgeoning sexuality and sexual awakening.
Frivolous Lola is a binary film; that is, composed of two very distinct parts that come together to make the whole a successful film experience. Lola (the character, not the film title) is an 18-year old girl from a small Italian fishing village ready to lose her virginity. This is the sleazy part of the two-part equation: Brass creates the character of Lola as an older male fantasy. She's the young girl discovering her virginity through aggressive seduction and copious nudity. She flashes her boyfriend often (usually by lifting her skirt to reveal a lack of panties directly to the camera and by extension the audience and Brass) and begs him to have sex with her. Sex is all she wants. She comes off as a thinly-characterized male epitome of the sexualized teenager.
Were this Brass' sole intent we'd have a completely capable sexploitation flick that's just as misogynistic as all the others. Although this was not Brass' sole intent when he cast amateur actress Anna Ammirati. She has no acting chops, none whatsoever, and this is not a bad thing; it lends a reality to the fantasy-like proceedings of the movie. Ammirati has an innocent look about her, a naivete towards sexuality that is endearing even as Brass films her like a leering old man, constantly shoving the camera under her skirt.
Most of the sex scenes in the film take place in Lola's head as long, drawn out fantasies regarding what her first sexual experience will be like. Dreamy and soft-focus these epic sexual misadventures play out more as child-like fantasies expressing the story-book longing of a confused and excited young girl. By contrast when Lola finally does lose her virginity, the soft-focus is gone, the shots are tight and close up, less leering as more personal; the audience is finally less in Lola's head (less up her skirt) and more privy to her experience, her sensation of sexuality for the first time. It's not a letdown of an experience either, to avoid that cliche, but vastly different from the elaborate fantasies that had been shown thus far.
To sum up, Frivolous Lola is a very erotic movie. It's actually erotic and that, in my experience, is a rarity. This eroticism is born by tapping into the sleaziness, the basic voyeurism of the sexploitation movie and tying it to the naive fantasies of a very likable if over-exuberant main character. The falsehood of the fantasies contrast the amatuer reality of the inexperienced actors and real sets to create a world of sexual awakening that honestly deserves to be in a less smutty movie sometimes. But we love smut here at the Hell-A-Go-Go.
*** out of ****
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