Cinema Desiderio

d. Jess Franco
w/ Emma Cohen,Howard Vernon , Philippe Lemaire, Françoise Brion ,
Simón Andreu, Alice Arno, María Bassó, Chantal Broquet, Carmen Carbonell, Nicole Guettard, Ramiro Oliveros, Lina Romay, Roger Sarbib, Ada Tauler, Robert Woods

SPA/ FRA 1973/1975

Amo tantissimo il cinema di Jesus Franco.
E questa piccola, minuscola opera, che non avra mai uno stato di cult-movie come molti altri suoi film, è uno dei suoi migliori film.
L\'altro lato dello specchio è uno dei 12 film che Franco fece nel 1973. Esistono 2 versioni ed è qua che inizia la cosa bizzarra.
Esiste un\'altra versione della storia di una giovane donna(Emma Cohen) che vive nell\'ossessione del suicidio di suo padre(Howard Vernon) avvenuta prima del suo matrimonio.
In una versione francese del 1975 (la mia) scompare il padre incestuoso ed a suicidarsi tocca a una sorella lesbica (Lina Romay) in un capolavoro di scene e sceneggiatura rimaneggiate allo scopo di inserire qualche scena porno.
Ma anche nella versione rimaneggiata, trasuda uno sguardo inquieto dell\'erotismo.
Esite una video cassetta in italia per una collana di classici del cinema xxx. Mai vista, credo un\'altra versione più spinta ancora.


\'Franco was working on a modern mythological cycle obscured by the requirements of pornography with VIRGIN, THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MIRROR and LORNA... which deal with real or symbolic incest destroying the protagonist and the possession of the living by the dead. Ana is led by the hanged father into the mirror where she discovers another dimension. She can walk down the hallway and appear in any locale: the park where she murders Robert Wood or the theatre where she stabs Ramiro Oliveros. It\'s always the stabbing of the male, relating to the execution of the bull in the corrida and the Spanish Catholic obsession with iconography. Franco understands that the camera is the dreaming eye [THE DREAMING EYE] so we look down at Ana in the park and realize it\'s HER watching herself kill. The zoom lens becomes the way to focus her attention within the zone and the affect of THE FATHER is translated by a sort of electro magnetism through the zoom as she picks up the knife to kill Wood. It\'s both mythological (Styx) and psychoanalytic (Lacan) at the same time. One can feel that Oedipus has NO choice and that\'s the comparison. The TRUTH is always the TRUTH, and it is usually hidden from view by APPEARANCES, which are always deceptive. The world we have created is a sham to escape the truth and Jess Franco\'s films take us back to the truth by penetrating the sham which is fortified by popular culture, the media and the codes of representation familiarized by Hollywood. The only other film directors able to achieve this are John Ford and Jean-Luc Godard, both prolific and widely misunderstood.\'