Search - Justine De Sade on DVD

Elegant soft core Euro sex romp...but it could have been muc

Capt. Freaky | Oakland, CA | 02/02/2008

(3 out of 5 stars)

"This film just misses hitting the mark in so many ways. There are the whipping scenes which are good...but the sex scenes are weak. Especially when the monks begin to rape the victim, they wear cloaks over themselves so you see absolutely nothing. The women are hot, especially the star of the film, Alice Arno. The background classical music is especially grand and makes the whole film appear to be more elegant than one would expect from this subject matter.
The dialog is tame compared to what they "should have been saying" while they were abusing these women. I would have liked to see more realistic pain and suffering...especially when you consider this is a Marquis DeSade film!

All in all, it was quite entertaining for Capt. Freaky. And I do recommend watching it if you get an opportunity. There are moments when your girlfriend may 'dampen her shorts'....and if so, 'go for it' with her while you can! There are no guarantee's that what you are looking at will get any better in future sequences, when you are watching this French farce."

A fairly faithful rendition of this legendary debauched tale

Gradient Vector Field | MA, USA | 06/30/2008

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I picked this up because I really enjoyed this story by the Marquis de Sade. Given how brutal the story is, I was very surprised that someone actually went out and made a movie. I confess that curiosity really got the best of me and I had to see how faithful they were to the story. I am pleased to announce that on that level the movie is pretty accurate, though I think some people will be disappointed in a good portion of how this is presented. Let me explain...

Okay, a lot of people associate Sade with sadism and other deviant sexual perversions. I think a lot of people read Sade and focus on these particular points, so naturally I think many were expecting an overly explicit movie depicting horrors in a very hardcore fashion. The whipping scenes are in there, just not as drawn out as in the book. However, if you read Sade you get a clear picture that it's not all about the perverse, it's about philosophy. A repellent philosophy that is supposed to go against the norm, to prove that concepts such as the relativity of evil can be conjured up by someone. While his tales may appeal to our violent or possessive/dominant side, I think the main point was to detail what is the major difference between concepts of vice and virtue. I think Justine illustrates this question very well.

There is a vast amount of nudity in this film, specifically when it comes to the women. Actually, most of the men keep their clothes on and basically keep their robes on. For the scenes that require it, they simply lift their robes in such a fashion that keeps things hidden and use the girls' body to hide anything. I know some people are disappointed now. I thought Arno did a pretty good job in this, but she was a little overly complacent in my opinion. I realize that Sade's portrayal of Justine was pretty submissive, but I just think they should've played up the terror factor a little bit more. Arno's performance was a little "too" okay with being tortured and raped by various people. Granted all of these scenes are blatantly faked and we can see that easy enough, call it a low budget problem. I personally didn't mind because I'm more interested in it as an art form, which I'm sure Sade the play writer intended. Although, Sade the practitioner may disagree, then again he'd probably support my ideology that we all have our different way of looking at things.

I was surprised at what was cut out of the movie. Most of the cut scenes actually involve the philosophical debates between Justine and her captors. I guess people view ideas as being more dangerous and explicit as some of the torturous scenes. Despite the cut scenes they certainly couldn't include the entire book, for the movie would be insanely long, so naturally the long winded philosophical passages that came from the libertine's justifications are very abridged. I was still impressed that they included this in the film, for I didn't find that boring at all. I liked hearing the justification for the vices. I have my own and I rationalize them to fit my worldview, very similar to how Sade's characters justify theirs.

I realize I didn't really go into what the movie was about, but it's basically about a girl who suffers progressively worse and worse misfortunes at the hands of more vile torturers. Justine is an orphan girl whose virtue and religion are her most important things. She is kidnapped and put in jail, raped and tortured as if a mockery to the virtuous life that has no escape from vice. Just when she escapes from one horror she is immediately thrust into another. It has the unhappy ending found in the novel, so I am glad they were faithful to Sade until the end.

Overall, I liked this movie. Despite its 1970's B-movie quality, I did enjoy their rendition. It didn't really have as much punch as Sade's original story, but I think that's because I was able to intellectualize with the novel a lot more. I also think that if you enjoyed Sade's works beyond the perverse writing, you will find merit in this movie regardless of the fact that it doesn't show anything in the hardcore spectrum. But of course it does appeal to those who enjoy a great deal of female nudity. Naturally Arno has splendid assets for this role, which is quite nice for Sade had a penchant for portraying quite vile looking characters."