La prisonniere / Woman in Chains (1968)

Stan Hassler blazes the development of modern art in his gallery, packed with works of surprising shapes, colours and textures, and where exhibitions turn into media events. Gilbert Moreau is one of the artists whose sculptures are on display in the gallery. His wife, Jose, is intrigued by the stern Stanislas, who devotes his free time to photography in an apartment that highlights his sophisticated artistic tastes. But besides enlarged pictures of calligraphic samples, Stan is amassing a collection of photographs that reveal a disturbed character. So why would Jose endanger her mature relationship with Gilbert for the morbid observation of Stan's hidden personality?

Director: Henri-Georges Clouzot
Cast: Laurent Terzieff, Elisabeth Wiener, Bernard Fresson, Dany Carrel, Michel Etcheverry, Claude Pieplu, Noelle Adam, Daniel Riviere, Annie Fargue, Germaine Delbat, Gilberte Geniat, Dario Moreno, Beatrice Altariba, Jacques Ciron, Rene Floriot, Henri Garcin, Jean Gold, Andre Luguet, Jean Ozenne, Michel Piccoli, Pierre Richard, Jackie Sardou, Joanna Shimkus, Clement Thierry, Andre Tomasi, Roger Van Hool, Charles Vanel, Pierre Vaudier




IMDb

A young female film editor specializes in discovering why other women degrade themselves in pornography and prostitution. She has a relationship with a boring artist, and her life is uneventful until she encounters an older, more worldly art dealer. The man shows her his photographs and she is mesmerized by a picture of a naked woman in chains. The man tries to hide the photo, but she is insistent on seeing it. The man admits this is how he gets aroused, by taking pictures of the bound beauties. The woman asks to come to a photo session where she is repulsed and intrigued at the same time. She leaves, but later returns to the man at his office and becomes hooked on his sadomasochistic voyeurism and begs to become the next model for his camera in the upcoming photo session. He brings in another woman and the session degenerates into a lesbian love fest that the man eagerly captures on film. Shamed, debased and degraded, she pulls her car onto a train track and contemplates her demise. Injured but not dead, she is straddled in her hospital bed when the man comes to visit. She goes into a psychedelic hallucination dream sequence in which her sexual escapades flash before her eyes as the man and her artist boyfriend engage in fisticuffs. Yikes!
~ Dan Pavlides

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