Paula-Paula (2010, DVD Review) Intervision Picture Corp.
Director: Jess Franco
Cast: Carmen Montes, Paula Davis, Lina Romay
Intervision Picture Corp. / NTSC R1 / Unrated / Widescreen Anamorphic 1.78:1 / Dolby Digital Stereo 2.0 / Spanish language / English subtitles / 67 minutes / PURCHASE FROM AMAZON.COM
Extras: Jess Franco on Contemporary Filmmaking / Jess Franco on Paula-Paula
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Anyone who dares to make 280+ movies over a 50 year span is bound to make a real clunker or two (or maybe 50-60, just playing the averages). Though he has bucked the system with a lot of his films, Spanish horror/sleaze auteur Jesus “Jess” Franco is not safe from those odds, especially later in his career. Even though I have only seen a mere fraction of his movies, the ones I have seen have been spread throughout his filmmaking timeline, so I think I have a pretty good idea of the range of quality. From 1968′s incredible Succubus, to 1970′s erotic classic Vampiros lesbos and all the way to my favorite Sadomania (aka Hellhole Women) from 1981, he has made some really great movies. But once you reach into the late ’90s with horse shit like Killer Barbies and Broken Dolls, you really start to lose steam.
His latest film, Paula-Paula made last year in 2010, continues the downslide into “maybe you should hang it up” territory. Now in his 80s, Franco has given up any guise of giving a shit about what his movies look like, the pacing or anything that would make a film worth the price of admission. Even his patented lesbianism shtick has gotten old and crusty (not literally, thank god). Paula-Paula: An Audiovisual Experience, as it is sub-titled, is what the movie is if you trim down the already boney “plot”. He wanted to make a trippy, erotic mind-fuck –like something maybe akin to David Lynch– but what we got was a very, very low-budget (I would guess no more than a few thousand dollars, tops), stretched out 1980′s adult music video, complete with 1980s visual effects trickery that could be outdone on my iMac, by me who has never opened up iMovie.
The premise is a stripper named Paula is accused of killing her other stripper friend named –you guessed it– Paula. What ensues is the aforementioned shitty, dreamlike scenes of the women dancing in slow-mo in front of walls of aluminum foil, making out and finally the end scene of Paula (SURPRISE!) killing Paula. That’s not a spoiler, that’s me saving you an hour (actually 67 minutes) of torturous movie watching. It’s not “so bad, it’s good” because the scenes are just so stretched out from most of the movie being in slow-motion, that your mind goes numb from the monotony. I’ll bet if you sped the movie up to real-time, it would be approximately 20 minutes long. If there is a reason to sit through this mess, it would be the outstanding jazz soundtrack from Friedrich Gulda. His music reminded me a lot of Vince Guaraldi, who I love. So buy the DVD, put in on through your sound system, turn it up to eleven and go scrub your nasty toilet or something.
Now that the bashing is over (I really hate doing that), I will tell you how much I liked the actual release as far as A/V quality, packing, etc. First, the cover is awesome. It features the lovely Carmen Montes, who plays the murderous “Paula”, wearing black panties and topless with the Intervision logo emblazoned on the bottom, which reminded me of the VHS covers of old. The transfer from the PAL disk looks very good and the audio thankfully sounds great for when you’re pumping it from the other room with your arm down the shitter. Also, the two extras on the DVD featuring Franco on filmmaking/makers of today, the other on the making of Paula-Paula were very interesting as well, although maybe that may be because he sounded a little delusional to me about his own grandeur. So all of that makes me look forward to future Intervision releases.
A fair and well-written review. I will buy tis release out of love for jess Franco’s past oeuvre even though I do not expect something better than what you have aptly described here. I have seen Franco’s SNAKEWOMAN, which is also of the pain-in-the-rectum watching type. Can you tell us if the Friedrich Gulda score is a new work or just a straight ripping of a soundtrack he made for Jess in the 60s or 70s? I guess it’s the latter, since this movie obviously had no money to lure the famous musician in for real…
I believe Gulda is dead so that leads me to believe that this score was already “in the can” and the narrative –as it is– was built around it.