Françoise (Maelle Pertuzo) is a pretty twenty-three-year old who has applied for a position as an investigative journalist. This is of course a skilled and specialised occupation so her prospective employer has to be sure that she is properly qualified for the job. He asks her to take her clothes off. Having seen her naked he feels reassured that she is indeed very highly qualified.
Her first assignment is to do a feature on Love in Paris. Her employer is certain she’s right for this assignment since she is a virgin.
What she has to do is to seek out the strange and unusual in the sexual world of Paris. Her first step is an orgy, which she observes through a peep-hole while hidden in a cupboard. Then she gets a job as a stripper at the cabaret Le Sexy. The strip-tease sequence is very strange but very cleverly shot. It’s very disorienting and you don’t get to see any nudity in this scene but it certainly sets an atmosphere of outrageousness.
Then she finds work as a street walker. Her one and only client has odd tastes. He wants her to dress in a bridal gown and then rape him. She does her best (journalists are dedicated).
Then she tries being a call girl, with similarly kinky results.
Things then get stranger, with Françoise infiltrating a bizarre erotico-mystico-psycho-physique poetry and sex cult.
She visits a lesbian indoor bathing club, and barely escapes with her virtue intact.
And then the movie changes gear in a rather startling way.
We’re now in mad scientist territory, with the mad scientist in question, Dr Vilard, working towards turning people into robots and then getting them to mate.
While the first half of the movie has a seedy glamour the second half gets much more grungy and with some grotesquerie.
There’s plenty of nudity, including some frontal nudity, but not much sex (the orgy scene is fairly tame although not as tame as the orgy scenes frequently encountered in 1960s American sexploitation flicks.
Even in an era which allowed cinematic mavericks and eccentrics to thrive Jean-Louis van Belle stands out for his intriguingly offbeat approach to film.
Maelle Pertuzo’s film career was very brief. She’s certainly lovely and she does give the impression of being an odd girl who actually enjoys her strange assignment and regards the world of kinky sex with amused detachment. She also has the right look - she looks great in the fashions of the time. She can wear thigh-high boots and a mini-skirt with confidence. She also takes her clothes off quite a lot and looks just as good naked as clothed. Maelle Pertuzo has to carry the film and has to make us care what this odd girl will get into next. Which she does. She might not have been much of an actress but she was right for this film. The other cast members don’t get a lot to do but there are some bizarre bit players.
Apart from the brief scene in Le Sexy this movie is not all that startling visually, and it features the lamest mad scientist laboratory in cinema history. It’s a set that belongs in an Ed Wood Jr movie. The mad scientist laboratory does feature naked girls though, so I guess that’s something.
There’s really no plot at all, just a succession of weird stuff happening.
What she has to do is to seek out the strange and unusual in the sexual world of Paris. Her first step is an orgy, which she observes through a peep-hole while hidden in a cupboard. Then she gets a job as a stripper at the cabaret Le Sexy. The strip-tease sequence is very strange but very cleverly shot. It’s very disorienting and you don’t get to see any nudity in this scene but it certainly sets an atmosphere of outrageousness.
Then she finds work as a street walker. Her one and only client has odd tastes. He wants her to dress in a bridal gown and then rape him. She does her best (journalists are dedicated).
Then she tries being a call girl, with similarly kinky results.
Things then get stranger, with Françoise infiltrating a bizarre erotico-mystico-psycho-physique poetry and sex cult.
She visits a lesbian indoor bathing club, and barely escapes with her virtue intact.
And then the movie changes gear in a rather startling way.
We’re now in mad scientist territory, with the mad scientist in question, Dr Vilard, working towards turning people into robots and then getting them to mate.
While the first half of the movie has a seedy glamour the second half gets much more grungy and with some grotesquerie.
There’s plenty of nudity, including some frontal nudity, but not much sex (the orgy scene is fairly tame although not as tame as the orgy scenes frequently encountered in 1960s American sexploitation flicks.
Even in an era which allowed cinematic mavericks and eccentrics to thrive Jean-Louis van Belle stands out for his intriguingly offbeat approach to film.
Maelle Pertuzo’s film career was very brief. She’s certainly lovely and she does give the impression of being an odd girl who actually enjoys her strange assignment and regards the world of kinky sex with amused detachment. She also has the right look - she looks great in the fashions of the time. She can wear thigh-high boots and a mini-skirt with confidence. She also takes her clothes off quite a lot and looks just as good naked as clothed. Maelle Pertuzo has to carry the film and has to make us care what this odd girl will get into next. Which she does. She might not have been much of an actress but she was right for this film. The other cast members don’t get a lot to do but there are some bizarre bit players.
Apart from the brief scene in Le Sexy this movie is not all that startling visually, and it features the lamest mad scientist laboratory in cinema history. It’s a set that belongs in an Ed Wood Jr movie. The mad scientist laboratory does feature naked girls though, so I guess that’s something.
There’s really no plot at all, just a succession of weird stuff happening.
Mondo Macabro’s Blu-Ray offers a good anamorphic transfer and it’s a two movies on one disc release, the other movie being another Jean-Louis van Belle feature, The Lady Kills (1971). There are some reasonably worthwhile extras as well (as there always are in a Mondo Macabro release). It’s the sort of release that makes Mondo Macabro so essential to cult film fans - two movies that nobody else would have even thought of releasing bizarre but they’re fascinatingly bizarre.
Pervertissima defies categorisation, although mondo film probably fits the bill most accurately. It’s not as good as The Lady Kills, but it is weirder.
Pervertissima defies categorisation, although mondo film probably fits the bill most accurately. It’s not as good as The Lady Kills, but it is weirder.
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