Aphrodite (1982)

Harry is a young millionaire on holiday; he takes his yacht to a Greek island, and stays in the mansion of his friend, Count Orloff. The Count organizes a feast there, for three days and ... See full summary »

Director:

Robert Fuest

Writers:

Pierre Louÿs (novel), John Melson (screenplay),

Stars:

Horst Buchholz, Valérie Kaprisky, Catherine Jourdan

Cast

Cast overview:
Horst Buchholz	...	Harry Laird
Valérie Kaprisky	...	Pauline
Catherine Jourdan	...	Valerie
Delia Boccardo	...	Barbara
Capucine	...	Lady Suzanne Stanford
Yves Massard	...	Baron Orloff
Daniel Beretta	...	Mark
Paolo Baroni
Monica Nickel	...	Julie
Carmelo Petix
Nicole Norden
Vanessa Weill
Lydia Dalbret

Storyline

Harry is a young millionaire on holiday; he takes his yacht to a Greek island, and stays in the mansion of his friend, Count Orloff. The Count organizes a feast there, for three days and three nights, which is the reenactment of the love cult of the Goddess Aphrodite. Harry will meet Pauline there, a young woman who becomes his goddess... (Loosely based on Pierre Louïs's novel, "Aphrodite".)

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Plot Keywords:

masturbation | female frontal nudity | lesbianism | bath | consensual sex | 

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Genres:

Drama

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Certificate:

R

Details

Country:

France UK West Germany Switzerland

Language:

French

Release Date:

7 July 1982 (France)

Also Known As:

Afrodite

Filming Locations:

Cyprus

Company Credits

Production Co:

Les Films de la Tour, Raoul Katz et Cie., Carlton Film Export

Technical Specs

Runtime:

88 min

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Color

Did You Know?

Connections

Version of The Devil Is a Woman (1935)

User Reviews

Not really good or bad, but definitely strange

Here's an odd movie. It seems to be another entry in the "Emanuelle" genre of would-be classy but often insufferably pretentious, or just plain risible, European erotica. This movie is even more pretentious than most, however. It is set on a yacht and private Greek island of a gun dealer and libertine in the last days before the start of WWI. The libertine gets his companions on the "pleasure cruise" to act out parts he has assigned them from a famous erotic play about the goddess Aphrodite. Fantasy and reality begin to merge and become indistinguishable--at least until the erotic revelry is broken by real-world historical events.

Despite this arty, historical backdrop, the raison d'etre of this particular piece de resistance is pretty clear--sex, sex, and, of course, sex. The girl cast as Aphrodite is the virginal niece of one of the older passengers (Cappucine), who is being blackmailed by the host in order to get the younger woman to participate. The niece is played by the tres luscious Valerie Kaprinsky, who has a nice long full-frontal and full-dorsal nude scene at the beginning, but otherwise stays aloof from the erotic festivities (although her much less attractive body double does briefly participate in one orgy). The sex scenes here were no doubt spiced up to some extent with near-hardcore inserts, but most of the cast, with the exception of Kaprinsky and Cappucine, do actually seem to be participating to some degree.

Still, it isn't really much of a step for Kaprinsky to appear in a borderline hardcore film like this, but what's really surprising is that this film was directed--not by someone like Roger Vadim or Just Jaeckin--but by Robert Fuest, a fairly august British director usually associated with PG-rated horror flicks like "The Abomidable Dr. Phibes" or "And Soon the Darkness". Obviously, he is a little out of his element here. This isn't as good as it wants to be or as bad as it could have been, but it definitely is strange.