Sylvia Kristel 1970s Collection

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box set with four films starring Dutch cult icon Sylvia Kristel. They are: Playing with Fire (1975), Pastorale 1943 (1978), Mysteries (1978), and Julia (1974). The box set is expected to arrive on the market later this year. Filmed and released right after Sylvia became one of the world's biggest stars as Emmanuelle (1974), Sigi Rothemund's 1974 film Julia is a German sex comedy drama, with Sylvia as a young boy's first love, foreshadowing her later U.S. commercial hit Private Lessons. Label description: Cult Epics proudly presents the Sylvia Kristel 1970s Collection, featuring four of the legendary Dutch icon's most diverse films in new 2K transfers and entirely uncut, for the first time on home video in the United States. Ultimately unsatisfied that her pursuit of Pauli seems to be going nowhere and desperate to lose her virginity, Julia sleeps with Pauli’s father. Oedipal themes drench the movie as Pauli engages in a tryst with his stepmother. While modern viewers will find this film a bit dull, students of the film may find interest in analyzing the gender and sexual themes present in Julia. This film is hard to recommend for anything beyond study.

She survived to work again, directing a short animated film, Topor and Me (2004), which won an award at the Tribeca film festival in 2006. Two years ago, I attended the Pula festival in Croatia where she was invited for the showing of Two Sunny Days, a Croatian film in English, directed by Ognjen Svilicic, in which she appeared in a small but important role. I had the pleasure of sharing a car with her on a two-hour drive to Zagreb, during which she chatted cheerfully about her career.MYSTERIES (Netherlands, 1978) Paul de Lussanet. Bonus features: 2K Transfer, Audio Commentaries by Peter Verstraten and Jeremy Richey, Vintage Interviews 1978 HD, Theatrical HD Trailer and more tba. Painter turned director Paul de Lussanet's romantic psychological drama Mysteries, based on the world famous novel by the Norwegian Nobel prize winner Knut Hamsun and shot by renowned cinematographer Robby Müller, also stars Rita Tushingham and David Rappaport. Not to be confused with the Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle with the same name, although released just a few years earlier and clearly featuring a couple of common themes, this "Red Heat" is actually a 'Women in Prison' exploitation movie starring Linda Blair (the amount of trashy B-movies she starred in during the eighties is nearly endless) and Sylvia Kristel; the one and only original starlet to depict the legendary soft-core film character Emmanuelle. The main reason why "Red Heat" isn't very popular or even commonly known among exploitation fanatics is probably because the script aspires to be overly ambitious and politically engaging. There's too much driveling about the Cold War and political conspiracies, instead of just focusing a little more on the obligatory "WiP" ingredients such as cat-fights, lesbian perversity and dark affairs ran from inside the prison walls. Don't get me wrong, "Red Heat" does feature all these elements, only in too small portions. That's why I think the comparisons between this one and "Chained Heat" (also starring Linda Blair) are completely unjust. I just watched "Chained Heat" as well and this movie is at least ten times more boring and less sleazy. The once-in-a-lifetime teaming of two '70s pop culture icons, Warhol superstar Joe Dallesandro and Sylvia "Emmanuelle" Kristel, is worth the price of admission alone and the fact it's an awful (albeit awful pretty) movie doesn't hurt, either. It fancies itself a European art house film and even tries to go Bertolucci's LAST TANGO IN Paris one better by laying on the kinkiness with a trowel but the results are more laughable than erotic.

Playing with Fire: Feature audio commentary by Tim Lucas; Interview with Catherine Robbe-Grillet (5 minutes); Mysteries trailer; Pastorale 1943 trailer; Julia trailer; Poster and stills gallery There can be few film actors so closely associated with one role as was Sylvia Kristel, who has died of cancer aged 60. The title role of the sexually adventurous housewife in Emmanuelle (1974) became a reference for every part she played subsequently. This was not surprising, as the Dutch star did play a character called Emmanuelle, with few variations, many times over. Released in 1975, Alain Robbe-Grillet’s surreal, absurdist sado-masochistic drama PLAYING WITH FIRE (LE JEU AVEC LE FEU) features Sylvia in one of her most challenging roles alongside Jean-Louis Trintignant, Anicée Alvina and her EMMANUELLE co-star Christine Boisson.

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Pastorale 1943 is easily my favorite film in the set but it’s far from perfect. It suffers from timing issues and the movie is far too long for the type of story we are given. I really did enjoy it but at over two hours long I found myself truly struggling to finish it. It’s a great period piece about Nazi occupation that many history buffs can appreciate. La Marge is a dramatic mixture of love, death, adultery, suicide and full frontal Euro-chic. A rich and handsome vine-grower, madly in love with his wife and their son, visits a brothel on a business trip to Paris. The previous sentence would be contradictory in about every country, except in France where having an extra-marital fling is something of a national sport. After the obligatory nookie with a disinterested Diana, who literally clinches to her money, the man receives a letter that his son has drowned in the swimming pool and that his wife has committed suicide. Instead of going home for the funeral the widower tries to cope with the tragedy by visiting the prostitute again who feels that something basically has changed in his, and her, attitude. There is no happy end, but – like David Lynch in Twin Peaks – it has lots of weird symbolism like a dwarf watching TV or a voyeuristic cleaning lady looking through the keyholes. Don't be puzzled by this ironic review, the movie is a masterpiece in its genre and one of Borowczyk's best and it seriously mystifies us why this hasn't got the same notoriety like Emmanuelle or Bilitis. The acting in this one is fantastic. Sadly, Kristel was not the star of the show with Hauer and Rappaport taking front and center. She is in the film quit a bit but this is a vehicle for Hauer and he makes good use of his screen time. It was strange seeing how young he was here and he still does a fantastic job. The supporting cast is great as well but it’s Hauer that pulls the viewer in. Finally comes one of Kristel’s more well-known works; 1974’s Julia, a German sex comedy/drama. Much like the first film in this collection, Julia is a study in perversion, though much less extreme. Pauli (Ekkehardt Belle) takes a trip to join his father for a summer retreat away from boarding school. There he meets a long-time friend and object of his lust, Julia (Sylvia Kristel). The two make moves towards lovemaking when they are interrupted by another male friend whose moves end up much more explicit than Pauli’s.