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Reviews
Largo retorno (1975)
Lynne Frederick is stunning but the film borders on the "sexploitation" side
The basic plot of the film is decent; a love story followed by tragedy and a loyal, loving husband waiting 40 years to be reunited with his wife. The use of music was successful in aiding the plot and giving it a relevant atmosphere. However, the presentation of the plot is disastrous and superficial.
Anna (Lynne Frederick) falls in love and pursues David (Mark Burns) who is 18 years her senior in real life and looks even older than that in the film. The storyline fails to explain Anna's attraction to David which is contradictory to the social norm of the boy- chasing-girl paradigm instead of the other way around.
Anna is portrayed as a rich college girl who enjoys car racing, partying with her peers, drinking alcohol from victory cups and flirting with older men whom she knows nothing about. David is a workaholic architect who considers his career his mistress and his source of pride.
The sex scenes are gratuitous, adding nothing to the plot. There are several of them interrupting their honeymoon outings and a couple as flashbacks. We already know that married couples have sex on their honeymoons and those prolonged sex scenes are not only gratuitous but make for an uncomfortable viewing, especially with company. The amount of fondling that Mark Burns deals to the private parts of Lynne Frederick's body is distasteful and could be classified as soft-core pornography.
Sex sells, and it seems to me that the makers of the film wanted to make a profit by playing on the sexual fantasies of men, especially older men wishing to be seduced by a beautiful 20-year old (Lynne's age during filming). A better storyline would have served the film better. Lynne Frederick is famous for her "fairytale princess" look which conveys a sense of youthful innocence (see her performance in Phase IV). Her heavy eye makeup during the sex scenes actually hid that natural innocence look since, I assume, it would not be compatible with the distasteful scenes.
It is unfortunate for Lynne Frederick to have been a working actress in the exploitative mess of the early 70's. I recall that she was only 15-years old when they were filming No Blade of Grass, her debut film. In that too is an exploitation scene where her character is raped. The camera was almost touching her bosom as the rapist exposed it and fondled it with his mouth. They never heard of a "nudity clause" back then and I doubt that parental consent was required for an actress under 18 to simulate sex/rape and go nude/topless for the camera.
Overall, this film serves as an example to those who say that sex scenes detract from the plot of a romantic film.