Sérail (1976)

Director:

Eduardo de Gregorio

Writer:

Eduardo de Gregorio (writer)

Release Date:

17 November 1976 (France)

Genre:

Drama

Plot Keywords:

Beautiful Woman | Female Nudity | Nudity | One Word Title

Cast

Leslie Caron	...	Céleste
Bulle Ogier	...	Ariane
Marie-France Pisier	...	Agathe
Corin Redgrave	...	Eric Sange
Marilyn Jones	...	Berthe, the waitress
Pierre Baudry	...	Bar owner

Also Known As:

Surreal Estate (USA)

Runtime:

83 min

Country:

France

Language:

French | Spanish

Color:

Color (Eastmancolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

USA:R

Company:

Filmoblic

Obscure, artsy, and strange...

I saw this film under a retitle - _The Deception_ - and I caught it on an old (now defunct) satellite channel, The Caribbean SuperStation, which showed lots of obscure movies. This film is about a novelist who's out looking at real estate and finds a huge, decaying old mansion in the woods. A somewhat-demented girl named Arianne gives him a tour of the place, but halfway through she runs away and hides from him. He decides that the situation has potential for a novel, so he goes back to the house. This time there's a maid, and a different girl named Agathe, who says no one named Arianne lives there. So, she shows him the house, and some things in it have changed. He thinks they're trying to trick him, so he comes back later and Arianne is there again, acting even crazier, showing him pictures on the walls which aren't there. Then she seduces him. The maid tells him that there are two girls, and he figures out they were playing a game to try to get him interested enough to buy the house, using Arianne as a "phantom." Even though he knows it's a trick, he buys the house anyway, thinking he can have both girls with it. But they have plans for him, too... Very odd, artsy, rather creepy film, half in English, half in subtitled French, and contains some nudity. Bizarre and very obscure.