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The Libertine

Play trailer Poster for The Libertine R 1969 1h 34m Drama Play Trailer Watchlist
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A French widow (Catherine Spaak) discovers her husband's secret sex games and plays them with a doctor (Jean-Louis Trintignant).

Audience Reviews

View All (10) audience reviews
Audience Member Another Frenchie about "discovering oneself through sexual freedom". Nearly risque for it's time. Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 01/25/23 Full Review Audience Member Its an interesting film that speaks more about the hypocrisy of the middle and upper classes at the time. The film does have a few erotic and kinky moments. Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 01/19/23 Full Review Audience Member Delightfully cheesy 60s music. And outfits. And decor. Catherine Spaak was adorable. The sneezing I can totally relate to. The movie was kinda cute, and often chuckle-worthy, but tedious now and then, too. Picture quality and dubbing, pretty atrocious. Rated 4 out of 5 stars 02/14/23 Full Review Audience Member Pleasure-seeking widow throws away all inhibitions to find herself. Rated 3 out of 5 stars 01/24/23 Full Review Audience Member This isn't an excellent film, but I suppose it's not bad. The reason to watch a movie like this is to get a sense of 60s sex chic; this is a little time capsule of it and nothing more. It's tame by today's standards, but I suppose that at the time all the bare breasts made nearly the whole audience blush. There's a carefree, exploratory attitude to the story, which fits in with America's sexual adolescence quite well for something made in Italy. For entertainment value, it's not high on the list, but it's a curiosity, at least. Rated 3 out of 5 stars 02/06/23 Full Review Audience Member One of those late sixties sex movies that makes up for lack of sex with piles of artsy daft shit. Lots and lots of slow motion, in which...very strange things happen at times, for minutes on end. And it's not sex, it's somebody having a nervous breakdown, it seems like. Or maybe that was sex? The sex part tends to get skipped in these movies, maybe it happened and I didn't notice. Anyway, young widow discovers her husband had a secret apartment that looks like it's waiting for Austin Powers, decides to get revenge by humping everything possible, pretty standard smut setup. What makes the movie interesting is Catherine Spaak as the suddenly slutty widow - this is a movie where a character's thoughts are heard, and throughout most of the movie, the protagonist carries on a conversation with herself. She's constantly predicting in her head what men will say next, asking questions in her mind then answering them aloud, then replying in her head...it gets a little dizzying, actually. This is a movie in which the main character has a beetle on a chain and the beetle crawls around for a minute or so on her nipple as she reads (in her head, I think) aloud from Freud about a man having a sexual relationship with a parrot. And then she picks up the beetle, says "My poor little lover, you can only tickle!" And then she runs off and wakes up her maid, scares her to death with the beetle, then demands over and over to know what the maid and her husband do sexually. This is suddenly interrupted by something like eighty minutes of slow motion of what the maid and her husband do at home, intercut with her protestations - he turns a firehose on her and she writhes around and acts like her breasts are really dirty, as it turns out. (These are middle-aged people in work clothes, BTW, it's...very strange.) And then the movie tries to make an X-ray sexy - medical fetish stuff abounds in The Libertine. And then something else insane happens. And then at the end she finds love and an end to constant penising (and reading aloud from Psycopathia Sexualis) in her chiropractor. Because he proposes, she says no, so he puts her over his knee and spanks her and tells her to stop being a bad girl. So then she says yes. Yay! God bless Italy. Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 01/29/23 Full Review Read all reviews
The Libertine

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Cast & Crew

Movie Info

Synopsis A French widow (Catherine Spaak) discovers her husband's secret sex games and plays them with a doctor (Jean-Louis Trintignant).
Director
Pasquale Festa Campanile
Screenwriter
Ottavio Jemma
Rating
R
Genre
Drama
Original Language
Italian
Runtime
1h 34m