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"Woman's shame is man's invention, I can prove it!" The young lady (Grazyna Dlugolecka) is warned against the charm of filth, and there's the blankly handsome, married anthropologist (Jerzy Zelnik) lodging in her parents' home. Love letters, promises of divorce, a tryst in the carriage illuminated by passing street lamps. The off-screen duel points this up as a Stroheim fable, the opponent is a nobleman (Olgierd Lukasziewicz) with his own designs on the maiden. Warsaw to Rome to Monte Carlo to Berlin to Vienna, with plenty of "embellishments of human nature" along the way. From confession to assassination, Walerian Borowczyk's obsessive soul of Poland, his Candide and his Tess of the d'Urbervilles. Dad is a sot and Mom a prig, her baby is buried in a snowy shed. "I am not a slut, but I may become one." Petals and linens, sewing machine and roulette, phonograph and syringe, objects of a great student of paintings. (Bonnard nudes for rapture early on, Degas sketches later at the bordello.) The utopian collective is a harem in disguise, the enlightened Count (Mieczyslaw Voit) scoops up streetwalkers and dresses them up in white for his farm, "to give up property to conquer the universe" is his philosophy. Social satire and tragic melodrama suit the politics of flesh, its shivers fiercely embodied by the quick bursts of Borowczyk's camera. The vultures met at the train station are not easily shaken off, one (Roman Wilhelmi) is a ringer for Oliver Reed at his most loutish while the other (Marek Walczewski) is Nosferatu with a monocle, escorts for the descent. The heroine's oneiric image turns out to be a perforated premonition. "Debauchery is a surer path to virtue than ignorance." Truffaut is parallel with L'Histoire d'Adèle H., so is Verhoeven with Keetje Tippel. With Zdzislaw Mrozewski, Marek Bargielowski, Karolina Lubienska, and Zbigniew Zapasiewicz.
--- Fernando F. Croce |