OK, the pace is slow and the sex now looks tame, but Radley Metger's once-notorious Swinging Sixties update of the old romantic warhorse is worth sticking with - if only as a time-capsule of the decade that inspired it. The scene has shifted from Belle Epoque Paris to 'dolce vita' Rome, and the dying courtesan (Daniele Gaubert) is not a consumptive but a junkie. But she's still the 'Lady of the Camellias' - with flowers aplenty. Watch a vase of them zoom hilariously in and out of focus as her young lover (Nino Castelnuovo - whose career looked so promising in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg!) teaches her the true meaning of orgasm.
All jokes aside, this version is surprisingly close to the Alexandre Dumas fils novel, with its dark core of eroticism and death. Most of the sex takes place in Marguerite's stunning white boudoir - ceiling mirrors, chiffon drapes and invisible plastic chairs. At the film's end, our heroine is confined to an oxygen tent after her last fatal OD. Visually, the setting is more or less identical. Her on-and-off love affair with priggish young Armand reaches its 'climax' at an eye-popping S & M theme party. (Cue for aluminium Paco Rabanne dresses and copulation in a giant gold cage!) This slick Vogue-ish sadism is sleazy but not gratuitous: it mirrors the cruelty at the story's heart.
Sorry, I'm making all this sound like Art, which it's not. Metzger's direction is alternately stylish and ham-fisted, and as for the acting of Mlle. Gaubert...well, let's just say Garbo and Sarah Bernhardt can rest safely on their laurels. The supporting actors are the veritable cream of Eurotrash - Silvana Venturelli as scheming sex-pot Olympe, Roberto Bisacco as libertine Gaston, Eleonora Rossi-Drago as high-fashion procuress Prudence - but they have far too little to do. The real star of this film is set and costume designer Enrico Sabbatini. His work makes Austin Powers look like an exercise in restraint!
David Melville
