Paolo, a divorced father of two young children, earns his living working as pianist for a hot nightclub in town. One night, while playing, he meets Franscesca, a bombshell of a woman who almost seems to have supernatural abilities when it comes to seducing men. After some playful banter Paolo invites Francesca to his beach house, where they plan an exotic getaway for the two of them. Francesca uses some special secrets she learned from a guru in bed, turning Paolo into a paralyzed sex-slave of sorts, fully erect but having no control over his body whatsoever. While Paolo seems to not have much of a problem with these strange circumstances, things get more interesting when Francesca gets bored with their sexual lifestyle and decides to leave. Marco Ferreri's The Flesh is a muddled and beguiling film that is far from the filmmakers best efforts, though it does maintain the filmmakers fascinating penchant for carnal desire and the strange sense of empowerment he gives over woman in many of his films. In this film, Franscesca doesn't even feel human, almost like a symbolic representation of male desire, with her volompous figure and sex appeal being completely intoxicating to Paolo. She seems to have also been distracting to the filmmaker as well, as this film frequently feels unfocued and uncontrolled, with Marco Ferreri himself intoxicated by Franscesca Dellera. With The Flesh, Ferreri seems to have something to say about the male ego, with Paolo becoming detached from Franscesca after she becomes disinterested. Much of this disinterest seems to begin with the mention of storks from Francesca, as the filmmaker seem to be trying to say something about the relationship between having children and sexual appetite. Of course what makes The Flesh his worst film is that it simply isn't very clear what the filmmaker was trying to say, I could be grasping straws here, but the film seems to be about men's sexualization and possessive nature of woman at the very least. While far from his best, The Flesh is a film that is worth experiencing, due to how the filmmaker uses Franscesca as a visual presentation of male desire.
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AuthorLove of all things cinema brought me here. Archives
June 2023
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