Orgasmo

The Yank in Rome, lured into the labyrinth of libidinous liberty. "It's my duty to remind you that this kind of freedom won't do your nervous system any good." The industrialist's widow (Carroll Baker) retreats to the Italian villa, the young motorist (Lou Castel) invites himself into her shower, booze and pills lubricate her newfound hedonism. Adding to the ménage is the feline gamine (Colette Descombes) who just happens to be the lad's stepsister, faithful attorney (Tino Carraro) and dour servant (Lilla Brignone) observe from the wings. "You want some advice to save your soul?" The heroine goes for the dissolute spectrum, "loneliness, pleasure, vice, whiskey," Umberto Lenzi with zoom lens in hand is happy to oblige. The boyish lout disparages money while scheming to take over the life of his bourgeois mistress, amid the bric-à-brac of his faddish pad is a blow-up of the leading lady's Giant co-star. ("Masterpieces are to be looked at," he exclaims of a bland canvas to butter up his sugar momma's painterly aspirations.) Discotheque nights, perpetually tousled bedsheets, "the melting sensation" sought and found. "Party's over," the banishment of the libertine siblings means blackmail and torment. Many impressions make up the luxuriant filming, Les Enfants Terribles, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? and Le Mépris, Polanski above all as a model for the lyrical disintegration of the besieged mind. A swirl of dolls and roses and cats and toads, the torture of pop music and the mannequin turned skeleton. "Don't end up like us," warn elderly relations out of Losey's Secret Ceremony, "forced to deal with alcoholics without ever being tipsy yourself." The stinger is a windshield shattered like the widescreen itself, and there's Altman with That Cold Day in the Park around the same time. With Tina Lattanzi, Franco Pesce, and Jacques Stany.