The Story of O (Just Jaeckin, 1975)

Udo Kier and Corinne Cléry in The Story of O

Cast: Corinne Cléry, Udo Kier, Anthony Steel, Jean Gaven, Christiane Minazzoli, Martine Kelly, Jean-Pierre Andréani, Gabriel Cattand, Li Sellgren, Albane Navizet, Nadine Perles, Laure Moutoussamy. Screenplay: Sébastien Japrisot, based on a novel by Dominique Aubry as Pauline Réage. Cinematography: Robert Fraisse, Yves Rodallec. Art direction: Jean-Baptiste Poirot. Film editing: Francine Pierre. Music: Pierre Bachelet. 

The interiority of novels is what makes them so difficult to film. The characters and action of a novel exist only in the mind of the reader encountering them on the page. When we see those characters and that action on the screen, they usually have a very different effect, especially when the novel and the film deal with sex. When The Story of O, a novel written by a woman, was transferred to the screen by a director who's a man, the "male gaze" inevitably informed the movie, particularly because the story is about a woman submitting to sadomasochistic discipline. So the film, whose subject matter and abundant female nudity got it banned in Britain and labeled NC-17 in the States, was also subject to charges that it was antifeminist. There are those who assert that it's actually a feminist fable, since O (Corinne Cléry) is given frequent opportunities to escape from her submissive role and asserts her equality, if not dominance, at the film's end, but they seem to be in a minority. In any case, The Story of O is not a very good movie. It's drenched in soft-core porn clichés and its soft-focus photography gives it a candy-box ambiance. On the page, the novel could be intellectually and erotically provocative. But on the screen it's just tedious and repetitive.