User Reviews

Although it was marketed in the US as a titillating "Adults Only!" attraction, The Flamboyant Sex is really a darling piece of 60s "existential alienation" cinema, much deeper than its shabby domestic marketing campaign would suggest; this remarkable Swedish production inhabits that alluring borderland between smut and theater, between low exploitation and high art, a missing link between populist and high-brow culture.

The film opens with a delightful prologue crawl, one of those structural anomalies so prevalent to cheap exploitation films from the the earliest days of cinema, used both to preface the story and somewhat "legitimize" the upcoming (assuredly tawdry) scenario. The ensuing plot is simplicity itself: Barbara and Lena, two Swedish naifs, languish in Paris, penniless and forlorn, as the darker forces of the city stalk them, threatening to swallow them up.

Barbara finds work as an artist's model, baring herself for the cold, cruel eyes of strangers. Lena ends up working at a piteous commercial laundry, a soul-sucking industrial hellscape that could have fallen out of a late Dickens novel. The girls soon learn that youth and beauty mean nothing in a city full of unemployed young beauties.

Barbara is the more worldly one, her sad, slow moral decline both poignant and horrific; she is so enervated by her collapse into depravity she is completely unaware that one of her later pickups is in fact a homosexual. Barbara later stumbles upon the corpse of a derelict, surely foreshadowing her own grim future. Lena remains an innocent throughout her ordeal, her unflappable moral courage aptly illustrated via a touching scene in which she plays with a neighbor child, bringing her as much joy as the youngster, a much-needed momentary respite from the "adult" world, and underscoring her role as an "eternal virgin." At film's end, Barbara has tried - and failed - to escape Paris, and finally lies on her bed, defeated and defiled. Barbara, meanwhile, whiles away the pre-dawn hours dancing to happy Jazz, now completely accepting of her curious destiny.

The film is awash with various slices of urban Parisian life: a Bohemian couple living in romantic squalor, sad animals made to perform humiliating tricks for a heartless master, the bustling, faceless crowds at the ubiquitous cafes, crabby landladies screaming for the rent.

And throughout, there is the undercurrent of jazz (that "decadent" American music) haunting the souls of our protagonists. The breezy, spare jazz score adds immeasurably to the already nihilistic atmosphere, the degraded nature of modern Paris nicely symbolized by this omnipresent noise as well as the violent, despairing, even horrific artwork hanging everywhere, meant to convey sharp moral decline. As well, the jazz clubs feature conspicuous racial mixing, possibly yet another sly stab at the city's moral descent into barbarism? Indeed, one might argue that Art is seen as a demonic force throughout the film, as it is used quite vividly to ensnare and degrade our lovely heroines, "victims of an immature dream about Paris."

In an amazing epilogue (narrated by Bret Morrison!), another foolish ingenue arrives in Paris, blissfully unaware she is about to be swallowed up by this evil metropolis: and it all takes place in one dreary, soul-numbing day! The moody monochrome photography, wonderful neo-realistic pretensions, exotic locations and strong performances make The Flamboyant Sex look at times remarkably like an Ingmar Bergman film of the same vintage, but without all the heavy-handed allegory and ham-fisted meta-theatrics. The film is surely a profound existential tract, about survival and compromise, about the shattering of infantile illusions and the squashing of youthful hubris. That said, American jerk-offs looking for cheap thrills may have been horrified at the unrelentingly morose mood of this compellingly dark film, painting a most unflattering portrait of life amongst the urban damned. Aside from some light nudity, there is precious little of sexploitation in this daringly modern look at postwar life. Pearls before swine, I say!