Maid in Sweden (1971)

User Rating:

5.6/10   

Director:

Dan Wolman

Writers:

Ronnie Friedland (writer)
George T. Norris (writer)

Release Date:

11 October 1974 (Belgium)

Genre:

Drama

Tagline:

Sweet Innocence Comes of Age

Plot:

Maid in Sweden tells the story of Inga, a 16-year-old Swedish girl who leaves her rural home to spend a weekend in the Swedish capital...

Plot Keywords:

Swedish | Bra | Voyeur | Sexual Awakening | Erotic

Cast

Christina Lindberg	...	Inga (as Kristina Lindberg)
Monica Ekman	...	Greta - Inga's older sister
Krister Ekman	...	Carsten - Greta's boyfriend
Leif Naeslund	...	Bjorn - Carsten's friend (as Leif Naslun)
Per-Axel Arosenius	...	Inga and Greta's father
Ittla Frodi	...	Inga and Greta's mother (as Itela Frodi)
Tina Hedström	...	Helen - Inga's friend
Henrik Meyer	...	Ole, a guy
Wivian Öiangen	...	Brita - the dream girl (as Vivianne Ojengen)
Jim Engelau	...	Leonard

Also Known As:

The Milkmaid

Runtime:

80 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Sweden:11 | USA:R | USA:X (self applied) | Italy:VM18 | Belgium:KNT

Filming Locations:

Stockholm, Stockholms län, Sweden

Company:

Cannon Films

Trivia:

Film debut of Christina Lindberg.

Quotes:

[after Inga settles in her sister's and Carsten's apartment]
Carsten - Greta's boyfriend: What are you taking at school?
Inga: I'm taking the required program.
Carsten - Greta's boyfriend: Do you like it?
Inga: Yes.
Carsten - Greta's boyfriend: [lights a cigarette] Smoke?
Inga: No, thank you.
Carsten - Greta's boyfriend: You don't smoke. Do you drink?
Inga: No.
Carsten - Greta's boyfriend: What DO you do?
[...]

Movie Connections:

Edited into 42nd Street Forever, Volume 1 (2005) (V)

Not for everybody, but you know who you are

A young woman (Christina Lindberg) goes to the big city to visit her older sister who, unbeknownst to her parents, is shacking up with a jerky older guy. Once there, in between some scenic interludes of her shopping and ice skating with her sister, there are a lot of even more scenic interludes of her showering and changing clothes. She has a strange dream where she's apparently gang-raped in a night club, and then goes home to her sister, who makes a lesbian pass at her(!). She is awakened by the sounds of the sister and boyfriend having sex and goes to watch them for awhile before returning to her room and pleasuring herself. The next day the butt-wipe boyfriend introduces her to one of his butt-wipe friends, whom she falls in love with, despite the fact that he date-rapes her on their first date. What little conflict there is in this whole movie then occurs when the boyfriend decides he wants in on the action too.

You kind of get the idea that the whole flimsy plot of this movie is an excuse to get the luscious Christina Lindberg naked as early and often as possible (which alone might make it worth watching for some). Unlike an earlier reviewer, I found this pretty hard to take seriously as a coming-of-age story, but if you do take it seriously the rape scenes might be considered pretty offensive. Personally, I took the whole thing as a fantasy. It's well known that both women and (non-rapist)men often indulge in these kind of rape fantasies. As genre critic Thomas Weissner once astutely pointed out, rape in real-life is certainly not fun or entertaining, but then neither is murder and we certainly get a kick out of that as long as it's put in the fictional/fantasy context of cinema.

Interestingly the sisters here are named "Inga" and "Greta", which are the same names of the characters in Joe Sarno's "Seduction of Inga" (the sequel to his ground-breaking erotic classic "Inga") which was released the same year. These are no doubt pretty common Swedish names, but it's certainly possible that this was meant to ride the coattails of "Inga", and that Christina Lindberg might have been cast in this (one of her earliest roles) because she kind of resembles "Inga" star Marie Lillejedahl (albeit with an even more impressive torso). Lindberg herself would later star in Sarno's best film "Young Playthings". Like a lot of the more famous Swedish erotica this has a lot of American names in the cast and an American title (which makes absolutely no sense given the movie). The voices were dubbed either by the actresses themselves or by other Swedish women, so the dialogue is either more sexy or more incoherent (depending on your point of view) than your usual softcore/sexploitation film. This movie is clearly not for everybody, but you know who you are.