The Story of O
France/Germany/Italy 1975
Reviewed by Linda Ruth Williams
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
France, the 70s. A young woman fashion photographer known only as O is taken by her lover René to Château Roissy, where she is chained, whipped and taught the rules of submission. She leaves wearing a ring as a sign of her initiation. Back at work, she photographs a model called Jacqueline. René introduces O to Sir Stephen H, who was raised as René's brother, and the two men share O. Jacqueline moves into O's flat, and is seduced by her. O is sent by Sir Stephen to the country house of a woman named Anne-Marie. She and the other young women there prepare to be marked by Sir Stephen. At the end of her visit Sir Stephen's rings are inserted into her labia and she is branded with his initials. Sir Stephen then shares her with two other men, the commander and Yvan. Sir Stephen, O, Jacqueline and René go to the commander's party in Brittany. O takes Jacqueline to Roissy. Finally, O makes Sir Stephen confess he would endure the same punishments for her and brands him by stubbing her cigar out on his hand.
Review
The problem with arty porn is that it tries so hard to be something it's not; if only the wolf of pornography would stop dressing up as the lamb of erotica. The fate of Pauline Réage's novella Histoire d'O, first published in the 50s, was to be adulated by the Paris intelligentsia as a treatise on existential nothingness, and then condemned by 70s cultural feminists as a male fantasy of woman's desire for self-abnegation. Yet if Just Jaeckin's more or less faithful adaptation does anything, at least it reminds us what a small story of commonplace degradation O always was.
Ever since Story of O failed to gain a certificate from the BBFC in 1975, its reputation as the most notorious of banned sex-art flicks has grown, partly because it was feminism's bête noire and partly because of the sub-genre of dodgy female sex-quest films which came afterwards, from Looking for Mr Goodbar (1977) to The Lover (1992) and Romance this year. Now that Story of O can finally be seen on British screens it seems that time has done it few favours. As befits a work directed by Jaeckin, veteran of such soft-focus 70s and 80s sex-tosh as Emmanuelle (1974) and Lady Chatterley's Lover (1981), Story of O presents hardcore subject matter in an inanely softcore fashion. For the most part, this tale of self-annihilation looks like a cross between a Biba commercial and a progressive-rock video, awash with knee-booted, shaggy-haircut 'chicks' drifting across misty landscapes in pseudo-medieval frocks - a fantasy of women forever at leisure and eternally available. Yet although there are nipples aplenty and a fair share of (female) pubic hair, there's hardly any male flesh, excited or otherwise, in sight. The sole reason for the film's notoriety seems to be its focus on bondage and whipping.
So is this still a film worthy of our objection? Illicit acts notwithstanding, underneath it all O is a woman who wants more than anything else to please her man. More unsettling than a masochism which finds its satisfaction in pain is the woman who can only say "yes". Nodding in the direction of porn's debt to the vampire film, Story of O's self-justification comes in its constant reminders of O's consent, which she is repeatedly asked for. Worse than being branded on the rump like a prize Jersey cow are the behavioural gymnastics O has to practise in order to ensure she never puts a foot wrong. A performance as insipid as Corinne Cléry's is thus, ironically, perfectly judged. In the voiceover O wonders "why she found her terror so delicious," but since Cléry's performance only moves from A for anodyne to B for bland, we never get to T for terror.
The film does, however, have a certain kitsch charm, awash as it is with appalling synthesised elevator music sweeping across the embarrassing dialogue dubbed into English. O's photo-shoot scenes are masterpieces of swinging 70s design, matched only by those featuring Faye Dunaway as chic photographer in The Eyes of Laura Mars made a year earlier. Story of O may yet survive as a cult classic of porno-kitsch. To his credit Jaeckin also keeps alive the possibility that this is indeed all an internal fantasy, a story played out only in the telling. The double opening is carried over from the book: O's story starts twice, with the voiceover coolly calling the second start just "another version of the same story". There is also a double ending, rather more progressive than Réage's original. The novella simply informs us suicide is the next logical stage of O's journey: "There existed another ending to the story of O," it reads. "Seeing herself about to be left by Sir Stephen, she preferred to die. To which he gave his consent." Jaeckin prefers to cast O as a proto-equaliser in the sex war. Tricking her lover into agreeing he too would endure punishment for her, she brands an 'O' on his hand with her cigar butt. The final frame of romantically entwined hands, his singed with her initial and hers bearing the O ring she got at Roissy, may stand as an apt image of the state of permissiveness circa 1975, the path of free love culminating in a coupling of mutual bondage and shared scars.
Credits
- Producers
- Gérard Lorin
- Eric Rochat
- Adaptation/Dialogue
- Sébastien Japrisot
- Based on the novel Histoire d'O by
- Pauline Réage
- [i.e. Anne Desclos]
- Director of Photography
- Robert Fraisse
- Editor
- Francine Pierre
- Art Director
- Baptiste Poirot
- Music
- Pierre Bachelet
- ©S.N. Prodis Paris
- Production Companies
- Gérard Lorin - S.N. Prodis, Eric Rochat - Yang Films present a co-production of S.N. Prodis/Yang Films/ A.D. Création/Terra Filmkunst GmbH
- Executive Producer
- Eric Rochat
- Associate Producer
- Claude Giroux
- Production Manager
- Roger Fleytoux
- Unit Managers
- François Menny
- Patrick Poubel
- Sylvain Hecht
- Location Manager
- Jean-Philippe Dupont
- Assistant Directors
- André Delacroix
- Jean-Louis Lapassade
- Christine Gozlan
- Yvon Sassiaud
- Script Supervisor
- Colette Crochot
- Camera Operator
- Yves Rodallec
- Set Decorator
- Olivier Paultre
- Gowns
- Tan Guidicelli
- Stylist
- Zorica
- Make-up
- Aïda Carange
- Florence Fouquier
- Hairstylist
- Patrick Ales
- Hairdresser
- Eric Wackers
- Music Arranged/Directed by
- Matt Camison
- Sound
- Alex Pront
- J.C. Duval
- Laurent Quaglio
- Sound Editors
- Gina Pignier
- Catherine Dubeau
- Elisabeth Parnière
- Claude Plouganou
- Sound Effects
- Jean-Pierre Lelong
Cast- Corinne Cléry
- O, a photographer
- Udo Kier
- René
- Anthony Steel
- Sir Stephen H
- Jean Gaven
- Pierre, O's valet
- Christiane Minazzoli
- Anne-Marie
- Martine Kelly
- Thérèse
- Jean-Pierre Andréani
- Eric, master III
- Gabriel Cattand
- the commander
- Li Sellgren
- Jacqueline, a model
- Albane Navizet
- Andrée
- Nadine Perlès
- Jeanne
- Laure Moutoussamy
- Norah, the maid
- Henri Piegay
- master I
- Alain Noury
- Yvan
- Jehanne Blaise
- Yvonne
- Ewa Carson
- Monique
- Sylvie Olivier
- Claire
- Bernard Jeantet
- Florent
- Jean-François Mathieu
- Régis
- Stéphane Macha
- Georges
- Vladimir Brajovic
- master III
- Judith Novak
- Madeleine
- Gabriel Briand
- master IV
- Alain Jarry
- Caroline Baudry
- Puce
- Vibeke Knudsen
- Roger Trapp
- Pin Pin
- [uncredited]
- Robert Schootemeyer
- master V
- Michèle Montel
- narrator
- Certificate
- tbc
- Distributor
- Arrow Film Distributors Ltd
- tbc feet
- tbc minutes
- In Colour