Review of Gwendoline (1984) by Donald W — 30 Aug 2010

French director Jaeckin, best known for the soft-erotica masterpiece "Emmanuelle," presents his lukewarm, artsy soft-spin on BDSM. Loosely draws on 1950s bondage-themed comicbook character Sweet Gwendoline, created by fetish artist/photographer John Willie.

Jaeckin, attempting to market himself as director of humor/adventure, split the film into two neat halves. The first half plays ho-hum, as fourth-rate, Southeast Asian-themed knock-off of "King Solomon's Mines" (the MacGuffin is an exotic butterfly): lousy jokes, cheesy blood/gore, boring topless shots - and subtle cycles of bondage/imprisonment & release. Shoddy set-pieces, uninteresting cinematography, irrelevant plot means fast-forwarders miss nothing.

Then, at mid-point, when Kitaen, her guide (Huff) and French-maid-in-tow (Zabou) release/escape into a futuristic art-deco industrial palace - populated by Amazonians strutting skimpy, skintight-strapped black leather garb - that butterfly is all but forgotten and the BDSM theme takes full charge of the film's second half.

The palace odyssey is nothing but endless teasing through ornate leather costuming, fantasy devices of torture/bondage, blood-drawing catfights, gratuitous full-frontals, chariots drawn by yoked-and-whipped leathered-up women - and a meaningless, confusing plotline.

Finally Kitaen, donning a spiked leather cowl and massively-wide Asian-shouldered black cape, takes her thoroughly tied-down Huff. Then grab that butterfly and run. Fin.

"Gwendoline" and Kitaen miss wide delivering the quality of "Emmanuelle" and Sylvia Kristel. To be fair, many actresses have tried duplicating Kristel's boundary-pushing erotic innocence via the Emmanuelle brand ? and all have failed.

Second-half costuming is visually interesting, as in fantasy films like "Dune" and "Star Wars;" so are second-half set-pieces.

Transfer is good; extras include Jaeckin commentary/interview.

RECOMMENDATION: Better viewed as camp curiosity - than as an actual erotic vehicle.