Frustration (1971) Online

I think comparisons of this film to Polanski's subtle, precise and devastating, Repulsion are a bit rich but I suppose I can see the reasoning. Frustrated lady going mad and all that but that's it. No way Mr. Benazeraf was ever going to go subtle on anyone but this does catch the eye. Not sure about some of the pretension dialogue or those great long periods without any at all but then this is a French film. This also means that unlike English sex films of this time that tended to have speeded up Benny Hill style slapstick sequences with people shedding the odd costume, the French way is to slow things down with slow motion and even stop with a lingering still frame. I'm being a little unfair because this does look great all the time, the wintry near monochrome exteriors and the full on colourful interiors and I haven't even mentioned the abundance of flesh, also beautifully shot. I don't believe I have seen a film where quite so many young ladies drop their clothes and with such abandon. There is also a Sadean sequence, some religious drivel and rather a lot of TV news which is at times an interesting element.

This obscure psychological drama is a film simply crying out for a DVD transfer. It's one that would really justify some loving care and it should really be available in a cleaned-up widescreen print. Its retitled name, The Chambermaid's Dream, is quite senseless. The original title 'Frustration' is much more meaningful. It's a pretty small-scale drama about a doctor, his wife and her sister who all live together in a remote house in a snowy landscape. The sister is a psychologically damaged woman with issues about sex. She begins having sexual fantasies involving her sister and brother-in-law. These become more and more sadomasochistic as the story progresses.

It's these fantasy sequences that elevate this feature to a higher level. They are beautifully photographed, with excellent sinister musical accompaniment. There is a definite foreboding atmosphere throughout the picture but it's these erotic daydreams that top things off. The film stars Janine Reynaud in the role of the repressed sister. She starred in several cult Euro flicks from the time such as The Case of the Scorpion's Tail and Human Cobras but of all her roles this is probably her best. She's very good and convinces as the troubled central character. The movie in general has a pretty decent level of acting and script, with several references to contemporary politics and current affairs. This, combined with the stylish erotic sequences makes for a pretty superior effort overall. It has the pastel colour schemes and slightly down-beat feel that differentiates French films from, say, Italian equivalents but this works to the story's benefit and fits in with its somewhat classy brand of erotica.

"Frustration" is a quintessential,low-budget and sleazy Eurotika's horror/drama from the Pope Of Perversion himself,director Jose Benazeraf(recent recipient of the 'Golden Penis' for lifetime achievement in porn).Tormented by incestuous fantasies,a sexually repressed woman makes love to her brother's wife and then kills herself.This truly bizarre piece of 1970s Eurosleaze is not easy to analyze.It's also loaded with scenes of sex and torture,but the nudity is pretty sparse and not explicit."Frustration" has been passed for cinema exhibition in 1972,rated X of course,but has never submitted on video.It's a crying shame,because this stylish little "Repulsion" knock-off needs to be seen.Give it a look.8 out of 10.

Jose Benazeraf's "Frustration" is a superior example of a sexploitation film which is well-enough made to classify as an arthouse flick. The film's portrayal of the interior erotic life ofa sexually repressed woman, whose fantasies turn increasingly disturbing, is handled better than anyone would have expected from a supposedly sleazy Euro exploitation flick.

Even the nudity, of which there is much, is handled in a tasteful and non-exploitative way.

Benazeraf's direction of the fantasy scenes, above all, is superlative. The cinematography in these scenes is subtle yet mesmerising.

It is beyond me how Benazeraf isn't better known; perhaps this was his only decent movie: it certainly seems to be his best known. His tag as "The French Tinto Brass" is ridiculous. Brass never had this much skill.

With Easter coming up,I started looking for movies that I could get a friend as a holiday gift. Taking a look at a DVDs seller page,I found an intriguing-sounding piece of French smut (I mean, "Erotica") Drama. Looking for details on the film,I found out that the back of the DVD case was a copy of a fellow IMDbers review!, I got set for what would hopefully not be a frustrating viewing.

The plot:

Since the troubled love she had for her dad was transferred to her mum, Adélaïde has been unable to tame her obsessive nature to sex. In a remote,snow-covered house, Adélaïde moves in with her sister Agnès and her husband Michel. Becoming frustrated at Agnès and Michel expressing love for each other, Adélaïde begins letting her obsessions making it impossible to tell fantasy and reality apart.

View on the film:

Smartly keeping the dialogue clipped,the screenplay by co- writer/(with actor Michel Lemoine) director José Bénazéraf snaps the start of Adélaïde's childhood frustrations with flashbacks listening in to political news played on the TV,and the strained exchanges between the family. While the dialogue between the trio is limited,the writers sharply use the minimal lines to draw out the fractured mind of Adélaïde.

Making each new opened door in the house be met with a S&M fantasy (?) from Adélaïde,director Bénazéraf (who cameos as the voice of a news reporter on TV) & cinematographer Georges Strouvé dip into Horror dream-logic,shimming in glided circling shots closing the trio up in the isolated location. Backed by an earthy score from Camille Sauvage, Bénazéraf melts reality and surreal erotica together in a delicious fashion which opens up the grip that sexual obsession has on Adélaïde.

Being the only guy in the trio, Michel Lemoine (married to the star at the time) gives a great performance as Michel,who Lemoine gives a delicate touch to,as Michel tries to express his concern for Adélaïde,whilst Elizabeth Teissier heats the screen up as Agnès indulges in all that her sister desires.Slowly losing her mind in the house,the sexy Janine Reynaud gives an excellent, sensual performance as Adélaïde. Spending most of the title silent,Reynaud subtly undresses the fracturing state of Adélaïde and her increasingly peculiar sexual desires,as Adélaïde unleashes her frustration.

Former darling of the French film critics of the '60s, the late José Bénazéraf (who passed away quietly in late 2012, aged 90 and almost completely blind) went increasingly off the rails as pictorial permissiveness of successive decades allowed him to indulge private penchants his early works only hinted at. A lifelong "provocateur", he would go to battle up against the censors and distributors whom he felt were holding cinema hostage. Tired of his haranguing, these would retaliate by delaying the release of his 1966 crime sage JOE CALIGULA by almost three years and forcing him to delete over half an hour of sex and violence. By the time it finally reached theaters, it had already been robbed of its shock value. As a result, the audience stayed away in droves.

The director, whose early hothouse melodramas had Cahiers Du Cinéma scribes comparing him to the likes of Bunuel, Godard, Antonioni and - in the case of his magnificent COVER GIRLS - even Vincente Minnelli, subsequently took the headlong plunge into pornography. Tentatively at first (with hardcore illegal in France until 1974), his early excursions suggest a carnal cinema that might have been if it weren't for the exorbitant taxes and zoning restrictions imposed by the infamous "X" laws intended to stop the flurry of filth feared by the government.

One of his most accessible works, both in terms of narrative and general availability, FRUSTRATION comes very close to being a masterpiece. A chamber piece involving three central characters, it contains one of his cherished themes - eroticism as an act of rebellion against the conservatism of bourgeois society - already touched upon in the previous year's indigestible LE DESIRABLE ET LE SUBLIME, though thankfully stripped of much of his hollow philosophies borrowed from Marx, Engels and Freud. Bénazéraf's tendency to mix porn with politics is reduced to a bare minimum here, apart from the characters absentmindedly watching TV shows on the country's dire economic situation, narrated by the director himself !

Spinsterish Adelaide (former fashion model and international party girl Janine Reynaud creatively) lives with her beautiful younger sister Agnes (stunning Elizabeth Teissier) and the well-off physician she has married, Michel (Reynaud's then real life husband Michel Lemoine), in a gorgeous old château in the French countryside. Each day begins and ends the same way, with Agnes seeing her spouse off to work and life seemingly put on hold until his return by dinnertime. Inbetween, the sisters pass the time in an uneasy truce, barely acknowledging each other's presence. At night, Adelaide is torn up by her own repressed passions as she's forced to listen to her sister's noisy lovemaking. As a tease, Bénazéraf doesn't show us the first sex scene but only lets the audience listen in, as is Adelaide's torturous plight. This segues into a memorable fantasy sequence of Reynaud running down a long corridor, opening door after door, only to find Agnes and Michel behind each of them, every time "frozen" in a different sexual position.

To upset the apple cart, Adelaide tells Agnes that Michel is fooling around on her, with a cheap prostitute no less, imagining herself in the part. Watching future astrologist Teissier fret about her husband's infidelity acquires a retro-active irony when one realizes the actress would eventually become the most heavily publicized mistress in France, to that country's president François Mitterrand ! Adelaide's behavior seems to suggest that she has designs on Michel herself and is indeed trying to drive a wedge between him and her sister. Truth is however that she has always decried Agnes's abandoning of both intellectual and economic self-sufficiency to the prison of marriage. Hey, they don't call it "wedlock" for nothing ! As she disapproved of their union, the intimacy shared by the sisters in their youth eventually turned to barely contained hatred. A tricky progression over the film's two final climactic sex scenes - a threesome with Michel dividing his attentions between both siblings and a lesbian coupling that literally forces him out of the picture altogether - reveal that this hatred is very much directed inwards as Agnes and Adelaide are shown to be one and the same, a woman disgusted with how much of herself she has had to "sacrifice" in order to obtain wedded "bliss".

The movie is at its strongest when this psychologically complex plot (typically told from the viewpoint of the "untrustworthy narrator") is related in comparatively straightforward fashion, basically over the course of the three sex scenes involving the central characters. The arrival of a British couple whose car broke down near the château only serves to dilute the dramatic intensity, leading to fantasy flashbacks to the Spanish Inquisition (huh ?) that feature Jess Franco muse Pamela Stanford among the abused peasant girls. It's a tribute to the strengths of the story and its three superlative interpreters that these extraneous segments ultimately cause no irreparable harm. The ravishing Reynaud has been mostly cast as weary women of the world but is absolutely riveting as quite the opposite here. Teissier also proves quite accomplished as she gradually dissolves into crippling insecurity when learning of Michel's alleged betrayal.

Likewise, the film's eroticism is at its most potent when it's most closely linked to the narrative. While not all that explicit, the sex comes across as extremely intense because of the dramatic repercussions it signals towards. Music is most sparingly employed with several long sequences (not just sexual ones) taking place in total silence and apparently uninterrupted takes. Another movie to use wintry isolation as a metaphor for its characters' feeble mental state, FRUSTRATION benefits tremendously from the exquisitely composed images conjured up by the underrated Georges Strouvé who shot several films for French outlaw film critic turned filmmaker Paul Vecchiali, including his fabulous foray into fornication CHANGE PAS DE MAIN from 1975, the final year when everything still seemed possible for the genre.