Reviewed by Julian Robinson
(8/14/02)

Connoisseurs of whips-and-chains cinema, rejoice! Radley Metzger's sadomasochistic masterpiece, The Image, is finally available on DVD. The transfer is magnificent, the action is uncensored, and the intensity is unparalled. Also known as L'Image and The Punishment of Anne, Metzger's elegantly severe adaptation of Jean de Berg's 1956 SM literary classic is far truer to its subject than is Just Jaeckin's soft-focus, dreamily romantic version of The Story of O (also released in 1975). The Image is so extreme, so explicit, and so erotic that it's a miracle it was ever produced.

The story (a plot it's not) is simple. At a swank Parisian party, rake-about-town Jean meets his old friend Claire. Having always found her impeccably aloof, Jean has never approached Claire romantically. Claire introduces Jean to Anne, a beautiful young model, explaining simply, "She belongs to me." Jean is invited along to witness, and later, to participate in their progressively debauched rituals, beginning with Anne's embarrassment, piercing with a rose thorn, and al fresco urination on command in a public garden. The Image's title derives from photographs of Anne in which she is depicted naked, chained in various uncomfortable positions, bearing the welts of a whip. The dramatic tension derives from Anne's increasingly harsh treatment, the unstable nature of triangles, and Claire's motivation: Why did she invite Jean to join them in the first place?

Highly faithful to the slim novel (which, the excellent liner notes point out, was written by a woman, Catherine Robbe-Grillet) to the extent of full-screen chapter titles and first-person male narration, the film is, much more importantly, faithful to the novel's spirit of pervasive, guiltless perversity. Says Claire, "Nothing that I like is allowed." And she gets away with it -- the morality police are nowhere to be found.

Marilyn Roberts as Claire is formidable, all cold control and cruel invention. Not a gesture is wasted. The mere act of putting on her sunglasses becomes a dire warning. Even in a suede minidress and thigh-high boots, she remains dignified and devastating, never a caricature. With a touch of envy, she taunts Anne for her conditioned response: "She loves it when we put her on her knees so we can whip her, doesn't she? It gets her all excited; she's wet already."

Why does Claire objectify, humiliate, and torture Anne? Not because she can, or because Anne lets her, but because Anne wants her to. The Image explores the delight of the masochist, a subject far more taboo, far less comprehensible than the joy of the sadist. Mary Mendum as Anne (at the time, fresh from Hair on Broadway) is utterly convincing, her wide-open eyes instantly conveying the excitement, fear, and shame that simultaneously possess her. Sent to fetch the chains so that she may be fastened for more severe punishment, shuddering with delicious dread, Anne says to herself, "Forgive me, for I know what I do."

There's some silliness: the Freudian tower shot and Jean's flashbacks to Anne's urinating on the rose interspersed with shots of Parisian fountains, not to mention Jean's demanding that Anne's whipping be resumed while she's giving him head; he must have tremendous faith in her jaw control.

As Jean, Carl Parker contributes little beyond his organ and his smirk, but then Metzger's female characters are always far more interesting than his men. Get The Image for the potent chemistry and sublime acting of its female leads. As well as ultra-hot, their play is ultra-wet, and with more than piss. Claire exults in constantly fondling Anne until she's on the verge of losing it. The restaurant scene, in which she stands between Jean and Claire, each of whom has a hand under her dress, while Jean orders an excruciatingly detailed salad, provides some much-needed comic relief. With Anne's masturbation on command, the threesome in the lingerie store fitting room, and all the public blow jobs that Anne's ordered to provide Jean, there are plenty of orgasms for everybody but Claire.

The electricity between Anne and Claire is extraordinary, building to a shattering climax in an extended dungeon scene that rapidly goes over the top and then just keeps going. The unflinching honesty of The Image's SM scenes makes them far more difficult to watch than much gorier conventional Hollywood brutality. There's no isn't-this-awful-here's-some-more hypocrisy and no coy cutting away. Add the classy production values and it becomes nearly impossible to believe it's only a movie.

Metzger's upscale oeuvre includes his essential lesbian schoolgirl adaptation Therese and Isabelle and, directing as Henry Paris, some of the wittiest, best-produced porno films of all time, among them The Opening of Misty Beethoven and The Private Afternoons of Pamela Mann.

He has my eternal gratitude for making The Image. There's never been a film in its genre remotely like it, before or since. In an orgy of understatement, Metzger says, "Theatrically, it was a little ahead of its time." It still is. It always will be.

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