Good movie?

Romina Power is a pearl cast before a mediocre director. What an opportunity wasted! Franco has nothing but scorn for her. Here he was offered a real beautiful 18 year old innocent on a plate. What a waste! He wanted his usual porn queen instead! He obviously cared little for what he was doing.

First of all, I can't imagine that this film is remotely true to the written story. I've not yet seen it, though I plan to once I find a copy of it, but the mere fact that the plot summary here on IMDB says that the character Justine is willingly "used and abused by all manner of perverts, freaks and sexual deviants." already indicates to me that quite a bit of artistic license was taken with the tale. Anyone that has actually read the book knows that her character is never a willing participant in the things happening to her and that she never takes any kind of pleasure in the various debaucheries she is subjected to.

For anyone who hasn't read the book: Justine is an embodied representation of virtue, just as her sister Juliette is an embodiment of vice. When the story was written it was considered an amazingly lewd, horribly graphic, utterly criminal work of literary pornography created by a man who was clearly insane, and having read it I can see where (given the time period) it would immediately be viewed as such. By todays standards, however, it's really not that graphic at all, though it is definitely lewd and has it's moments where it comes close to being literary porn. Many people, however, overlooked (and continue to do so) the fact that it was a philosophical query that spent the majority of it's pages wondering how God and Nature can allow someone who is virtuous to be so cruelly punished for their constant virtue and to go unrewarded in their life while the 'sinful criminals' around them not only profit but often lead wonderfully content lives with little worry and less fear. (Which, by the by, probably explains why the alternative titles of the novel were "Good Conduct Well Chastised!" and "The Misfortune of Virtue".)

Most of de Sades writing, while catering to the masses*1 by being almost offensively lewd (a publisher will not spend the money and time to print a book that does not sell after all), was nothing more than philosophical thought expressed by ink - even Justine's companion novel, Juliette, looks at the quandary of virtue and vice in society, merely from the perspective of vice rather than virtue (the more traditional direction to look at that particular question). Yes, the man was a libertine, certainly, and he neither hid that nor was he ashamed of being such*2, but it amazes me that so many people are still fascinated by his work only because they think he was some sort of "sick freak"*3 and we tend to be morbidly fascinated by things of that nature (just look at how well movies with a lot of violence do and how much traffic slows down when passing a bad accident on the freeway).

That all aside, do I think it will be a good movie when I finally get to see it? I hope so, but I'm keeping my hopes rather low thanks to the few comments it has received and the summaries listed on it's page. I guess I'll just have to wait and see.



*1 "Wealth and Pleasure be yours! If my scribblings have brought you a measure of both, set me to advantage on your bookshelf. If I have bored you, accept my apologies and consign me to the flames." de Sade

*2 "Yes, I am a libertine, I admit it freely. I have dreamed of doing everything that it is possible to dream of in that line. But I have certainly not done all the things I have dreamt of and never shall. Libertine I may be, but I am not a criminal, I am not a murderer." de Sade, 1781

*3 "Like Machiavelli, Sade was for many years considered to have a criminal mind, but he is now viewed as an original thinker and a precursor to Freud, Nietzsche, and existentialism." preface, 1993 edition of Justine, printed by arrangement with Grove/Atlantic Inc for the Book-of-the-month Club



~@~ Victor Hugo: Imagination is intelligence with an erection.