Monamour

**The exuberant Marta and the art of provocation** Marta (the Uzbek beauty Anna Khimskaia, perhaps the most stunning model Brass has worked with in his recent softcore era) is a bored wife neglected by her husband, Dario—a lazy, conservative literary editor who, after six months of marriage, seems indifferent to keeping the passion alive. His conservative outlook on sex clashes head-on with her fantasies. However, Marta is a free spirit who gives free rein to her uninhibited behavior, always under the scandalized gaze of her partner. She flirts with anyone who shows the slightest interest in her sensuality, and at a literary party she is forced to attend, she meets Leon, a handsome French artist whose overwhelming and enigmatic presence allows him to practically make love to her right then and there. Drawn to Leon's audacity, Marta secretly allows herself to be seduced, while Dario not only grows quickly suspicious but soon confirms the infidelity through a personal diary where she records her adulterous exploits (groping, sodomy, threesomes, etc.). Tinto Brass is probably best known in the English-speaking world for the unsettling Caligula, but he boasts an extensive career stretching into the first decade of the 21st century, defined by a soft yet explicit eroticism—a sort of subgenre rarely seen since the 1970s. Tinto Brass’s unhealthy obsession with asses, female sodomy, voluptuousness, and his actresses' natural body hair—combined with the use of realistic prosthetic penises (to simulate penetration or fellatio) and an almost identical mise-en-scène and cinematography—makes it highly difficult to tell one film from another. This invites the viewer to apply the classic maxim "if you've seen one, you've seen them all," even though "Monamour" undoubtedly stands out in his catalog due to the visceral, prurient thrill it pours over the audience.