L'insatisfaite (1972)

Director:

Jean-Marie Pallardy

Writers:

Jean-Marie Pallardy
Jean-Claude Gay

Release Date:

5 July 1972 (France)

Genre:

Adventure | Thriller

Tagline:

Fulfilling every desire.

Plot:

Stéfanie, nursing an old man in a nice country villa, has been killed by young men; they will try to replace her with a double; when she finally gets suspicious they plan to kill her too. |

Cast

Patrice Cuny	...	Patrick
Georges Guéret	...	Georges
Jacques Insermini	...	Jacques
Pierre Oudrey	...	Pierre
Michele Bory	...	Isabelle (as Michelle Bory)
Danièle Vignault	...	Patricia / Stéfanie (as Danielle Vignault)
Colette Castel
Béatrice Costantini		(as Béatrice Constantini)
Karine Marceau
René Boutron
Jean-Claude Strömme		(as Jean-Claude Strom)
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Alice Arno	...	(uncredited)

Directed by
Jean-Marie Pallardy

Writing credits (in alphabetical order)
Jean-Claude Gay
Jean-Marie Pallardy

Produced by
Joël Lifschutz	....	producer (as Lifschütz)

Original Music by
Lucien Attard
Gaston Frèche		(as Gaston Fresh)

Cinematography by
Max Monteillet

Film Editing by
Guillaume Cizodor
Michelle Ruelle

Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Jean-Claude Gay	....	assistant director
Daniel Henneveux	....	second unit director
Jean-Claude Raga	....	second unit director

Sound Department
Alain Muslin	....	sound
Jean Vermeulen	....	sound

Stunts
Georges Guéret	....	stunts
Jacques Insermini	....	stunts

Camera and Electrical Department
Jean-Claude Larrieu	....	camera operator

Animation Department
Bertrand de Roussain	....	animator
Patrice Dubois	....	animator

Production Companies

• Les Films J.M.P.
• Paris Interproductions (PIP)

Distributors

• Times Film Corporation (1973) (USA) (theatrical) (dubbed)
• Cocinor
• Force Entertainment (2005) (Australia) (DVD)
• Pathfinder Pictures (2003) (USA) (DVD)
• Syme Home Video (1984) (Australia) (VHS) (As "Unsatisfied")

Also Known As:

Runtime:

France:90 min | USA:83 min (DVD version)

Country:

France

Language:

French

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

UK:18 | Australia:MA15+ (2005) (re-rating) | Australia:R (1984) (original rating)

Company:

Les Films J.M.P.

Unsatisfying porn noir

Yes, I couldn't resist the temptation of the title - when the ball's heaved smack down the middle of the plate it's hard to just take a pitch. The convoluted plot line of UNSATISFIED left me cold.

I won't recuse myself, but have to admit upfront that I once met director Jean-Marie Pallardy, at the Cannes Market hawking WHITE FIRE if memory serves. I know Fred Williamson was lurking nearby. But I've never taken a liking to his various action and/or porn flicks.

This film at the very beginning of his career has a very, very weak opening which undermines the rest of the picture. I'm sure if he were working in a studio system environment, whether in Hollywood or at Gaumont or UGC back home, these key plot holes would have been filled up at the scripting stage, but unfortunately prove to be disastrous.

-SPOILERS AHEAD-

Pic opens with an old coot having a heart attack, and when his sexy nurse Stephanie brings him his medicine he tries to rape her (!). She flashes full-frontal nudity (just so us fans will know what kind of movie we've wandered into) and falls off a cliff (!). Tbe old guy finds her hanging in a tree but can't get her down so he runs to fetch help, and a masked, black-gloved killer appears out of nowhere to choke Stephanie with the tree branches (!). Punchline, is that all of the above is NOT what's really wrong with the opening!

Excuse my exclamation marks, but I'm trying to convey how a seasoned film buff like myself reacted to the absurd twists & turns of Pallardy's narrative, way beyond the usual unbelievable nonsense of a mediocre film. The coup de grace comes in scene two: Old Man is feeling guilty, assuming that he caused Stephanie's death. He plots with his mustachioed future son-in-law and that kid's brother Patrick to find another girl, have her subjected to plastic surgery, and substitute her for Stephanie before anyone in town's the wiser (!). On this ultra-flimsy plot hook hangs another 80 minutes of bad road.

The creepy brothers wander the streets at night in search of a whore to fill the bill. They discover Patricia, and Patrick (hey, that would look nice on wedding invitations) inveigles his way into her life posing as rich kid captain of a yacht (!). They fall in love and she, natch, hides the fact she's a prostie.

The brothers take her to their house in the country, but meanwhile two mean pimps start a serious search to find their missing girl Patricia. It doesn't help matters that Pallardy has cast two guys who look like stunt men -i.e., they don't resemble either pimps or card-carrying actors in the slightest. The unlikely duo dominate the rest of the film just out of strangeness.

A truly stupid subplot erupts when the hornier of the two pimps named Jack encounters a plain-jane shop girl Elisabeth working at the country grocery store. After the usual look-up-her-skirt-and-cop-a-feel scene when she goes up a ladder to fetch something he falls in love with her (!). Not your usual, seasoned Parisian pimp. By film's end he seems to be wanting to give up his hectic life in the capital, and retire with Elisabeth to the country (!). Whew! When not digressing into this lame subplot, Pallardy kills time with the sex between the old coot's daughter Isabelle and her fiancé Mr. Mustache -truly boring but necessary to fill the film's quota of semi-nude women on screen.

Inadvertently building a substructure that will have semiotics majors, folds-within-folds theorists or other academic film types drooling, Pallardy builds two warring teams: the pimps vs. the brothers, who actually all meet up for a "friendly" dinner together as the pimps track Patricia down to the country home. The brothers turn out to be the real bad guys, plotting to kill Old father-in-law-to-be, his daughter/wife-to-be Isabelle and even each other (!). So the pimps rule (!).

Each idiotic plot twist is telegraphed and easy to follow, but that doesn't make them fun. To a sane viewer, desperately in search of some diversion or what we laughingly call entertainment, each brick in Pallardy's structure is just another thud to the side of the head. My least-favorite sequence (nearly causing me to turn off the DVD machine and chuck this crap into the wastebasket) was when Patrick contrives to throw acid in Patricia's face, in order to have an excuse for that plastic surgery. He tells her that her old johns won't recognize her new face and she likes that upside (!). He then trots the "new" Stephanie (of course Martin Landau-style Pallardy merely trots out the unsung actress from the opening reel to take over her nurse role once more) around town in one of the most ludicrous bits of celluloid I've ever seen -all the townsfolk say "Hi Stephanie" and even then Patricia doesn't notice anything amiss.

By the time the gendarmes arrive not so much in the nick of time at film's end, called in by the pimps who are very, very well acquainted with the police by definition, I had been through the wringer. A quickie, hurried denouement by Pallardy was, you guessed it, unsatisfying.

Best thing about this meretricious junker is a fine, original jazzy score.