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Erotic Sex Games
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray B - United Kingdom - 88 Films Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (22nd April 2025). |
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The Film
 Françoise (The Blood Rose's Michèle Perello) used to be a nurse until she married paraplegic businessman Raoul Beauchamps (Bel Ami's André Chazel). Now she spends a few days in Paris minding her gallery and the rest of the week in the country lounging in the sun between tennis matches with high society friends. She has become increasingly disturbed by the proximity of her stepson Christian (Emanuelle and Lolita's Richard Darbois) who is taking some time away from his medical studies to ride his motorbike and hang out with local girl Julie (The Pleasure Shoppe's Michèle Grubert) who runs with the biker crowd. When the sexual fantasies of both become reality, Christian becomes jealously possessive and Françoise feels guilt and shame over betraying the man who has given her so much without expecting anything in return. While both fight their attraction and separately try to work up the courage to come clean to Raoul, the older man's majordomo and former army sergeant Fernand (Love and Death's Henri Czarniak) goads his employer about the possibility of betrayal by the two people he loves most. One of roughly a dozen films directed by Alain Nauroy (Africa Love) during the seventies/early-eighties "porno chic" era when sex films were an easier way to break into the motion picture business than low-budget horror films – consequently, also a period in which more softcore erotic directors like Jean Rollin, Jess Franco, Max Pécas , Claude Mulot, and José Bénazéraf either struggled to reconcile their style with commercial demands or just checked out creatively – Erotic Sex Games was produced in both softcore and hardcore versions (the latter with body double inserts for the male cast) and the former on view here really suffers because of hat commercial necessity. The plot was already paper-thin but the dynamics of the household that should be a source of tension – the dysfunctional relationship between master and servant deserved more screen time – but instead we get exceedingly long simulated sex scenes that provide an abundance of nudity but their duration seems as much a means of bringing the production up to feature-length as providing in- and out-points for the insertion of hardcore material. Perello, Grubert, and Marie-Christine Chireix (Prostitution clandestine) – who plays the family maid who shares her bed with Fernand – had all appeared in hardcore French films around this period, and Françoise Avril (Blue Ecstasy) and Alban Ceray (Helga: She Wolf of Stilberg) seem to have been included among Julie's biker friends specifically for hardcore inserts while Chazel and Czarniak appeared as character actors in a number of softcore and hardcore films as well. Darbois, who later became a voice actor in dubbing and animation, was a regular lead in French erotica who would be doubled in hardcore versions including Pécas' Luxure in which he would catch the attentions of another love-starved "older" woman. Production values are modest but elegant, largely thanks to the locations and the photography of Claude Bécognée who also photographed a handful of Rollin hardcore films as well as his softcore Bacchanales Sexuelles, the horror film Grapes of Death, and his artier The Escapees. 
Video
Erotic Sex Games was produced in two versions: the softcore "Les amours singulières" (84 minutes) and the hardcore "Le cri du désir" (82 minutes). The softcore version was exported to the U.K. where it was released by Eural Films in 1977 in a version cut by roughly thirteen minutes for an X-certificate while the 1981 Australian R18+ release appears to have not suffered any cuts (although the country's own homegrown softcore flims usually cut or rejected by the BBFC). 88 Films' 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.78:1 widescreen presenation is that of the softcore version with "Le cri du désir" as a burnt-in subtitle beneath the "Les amours singulières" title card, and is presumably the same master as rights owner L.C.J. Éditions' French DVD. The softcore version's titles unfold on black as they did on the earlier video master while the hardcore version's titles unfolded over establishing shots of the countryside and Christian on his motorbike (we are uncertain whether the softcore version was always like that or if the transfer techs for both the SD and HD master just did not bother overlaying the titles on the intended background). The OAR is probably 1.66:1 but the 1.78:1 framing is not ruinous to any of the compositions. While likely not an upscale, it does seem to be an HD master optimized for DVD a while ago with some faint halos and sharpening. 
Audio
The English dub has not been included but the French LPCM 2.0 mono track is free of any obvious defects apart from some minor hiss that might have always been part of the mix. Optional English subtitles are provided but the storyline is pretty rudimentary. 
Extras
There are no extras.
Packaging
The disc comes with a original and newly commissioned artwork by Silver Ferox. 
Overall
Erotic Sex Games is an attractive French softcore melodrama but it has all been done before and better by other filmmakers.
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