Franco February Day 15 brings you what I would honestly consider one of Jess Franco's worst films, a trippy curio from his very late period, that at least has some digital-psychedelic visuals and a pretty terrific score, but this is one for the Franco completists only.
PAULA-PAULA (2010)
Label: InterVision Picture Corp.
Region Code: Region-FREE
Rating: Unrated
Duration: 67 Minutes
Video: Anamorphic Widescreen (1.781)
Audio: Spanish Dolby Digital 2.0
Director: Jess Franco
Cast: Paula Davis, Carmen Montes, Lina Romay
Synopsis: Alma Pereira is a female police officer investigating the murder of an exotic dancer at a sleazy club in Malaga, Spain. She's called to the Flamingo Club in a back alley of Antofagasta, where she confronts the prime suspect, Paula, a friend of the victim. After a brief Q&A the balance of the film shows what happened in the interval leading up to the killing, which turns out to be a crime of passion. Or is it all in the mind of Paula?
I first saw this strange film when I had just started up the blog in 2010, and only just beginning to enter the lurid world of the legendary Spanish cult-filmmaker Jess Franco. I was excited to see what the master of Eurosleaze had left in him at this late stage in his career, having already made roughly two-hundred films at that point, going in to make four more films before his passing in 2013. So what did filthy Franco have for us? Well, just coming into knowing that Franco didn't make "normal" movies with a the most linear narratives is a plus, but that summary is particularly accurate in respect to Paula-Paula.
Advertised as an "An AudioVisual Experience", which it is, but then again, isn't every film since the first "talkie" an audio-visual experience? From what I've been able to make-out we have Paula (Carmen Montes, Snakewoman), an exotic dancer who has been arrested for the murder of another dancer also named Paula (Paula Davis). She is arrested and taken-in for questioning, interviewed by Alma Pereira (Lina Romay, Marquise De Sade), and let me just say that having just watched Franco's sex-fueled Night of Open Sex (1983) last night seeing Romay in her advanced age was a shock, and a reminder of the cruelties of age, but we're all headed that way. It's how I feel when I look up a classmate on Facebook, thinking to myself, 'when did they get old?' and them realizing they're thinking the same thing looking at me! Anyway, Paula's not forthcoming with the answers, coming off as a few tacos short of a proper combination plate at first blush. From here we see fragments of what may have transpired leading up to the murder as seen through Paula's mind's eye, sort of, maybe.
Even after a handful of viewings through the years I still find this whole thing a bit confusing, basically boiling down to a fairly trippy and artsy striptease followed by 20-minutes of slow-mo lesbian sex scene, 'natch, it's a Franco film! All of this culminates in a somewhat baffling and anti-climactic murder scenario. Even with the lurid appeal of a striptease filtered through some acid-trip on a budget visuals, and the girl-on-girl sex-action this was a bit of a slog for me. That's coming from someone who likes a lot of Franco's out-there stuff, though I've only seen about a tenth of his film so far, there's a lot more to go.
Franco makes the assertion that the inspiration for Paula-Paula came from Robert Louis Stevenson's Jekyll/Hyde story, and while there might be the tiniest hint of such a things that's really stretching it. If I hadn't of read it in the press kit I don't think I would have made this connection.
One thing I will say about this film is that the jazz score provided by the late Austrian composer Friedrich Gulda, who scored Franco's Succubus, which I still have not seen, is terrific. The films serves more as a erotic music video to the set to the fantastic score. Interestingly the music was not scored specifically for the film, it was gifted to Franco by the children of Gulda after his death. Perhaps the film is a tribute to the composer's score, now that is slightly more interesting that what I thought of the film.
Even after a handful of viewings through the years I still find this whole thing a bit confusing, basically boiling down to a fairly trippy and artsy striptease followed by 20-minutes of slow-mo lesbian sex scene, 'natch, it's a Franco film! All of this culminates in a somewhat baffling and anti-climactic murder scenario. Even with the lurid appeal of a striptease filtered through some acid-trip on a budget visuals, and the girl-on-girl sex-action this was a bit of a slog for me. That's coming from someone who likes a lot of Franco's out-there stuff, though I've only seen about a tenth of his film so far, there's a lot more to go.
Franco makes the assertion that the inspiration for Paula-Paula came from Robert Louis Stevenson's Jekyll/Hyde story, and while there might be the tiniest hint of such a things that's really stretching it. If I hadn't of read it in the press kit I don't think I would have made this connection.
One thing I will say about this film is that the jazz score provided by the late Austrian composer Friedrich Gulda, who scored Franco's Succubus, which I still have not seen, is terrific. The films serves more as a erotic music video to the set to the fantastic score. Interestingly the music was not scored specifically for the film, it was gifted to Franco by the children of Gulda after his death. Perhaps the film is a tribute to the composer's score, now that is slightly more interesting that what I thought of the film.
Audio/Video: Paula-Paula (2010) arrives on DVD from Intervision framed in anamorphic widescreen (1.78:1) with a Spanish Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo soundtrack with optional English subtitles. The transfer seems to accurately represent the digital video cinematography and is augmented by some artsy digital effects wizardly. The Spanish dialogue seems a bit buried in the mix throughout but the amazing jazz score sounds mighty fine indeed.
Extras includes an introduction and two interviews with Franco. The introduction to the film was recorded mere moments after the initial filming of Paula-Paula and Franco seems quite excited about the project. The other interviews have Franco discussing the state of filmmaking, the music and cast of Paula-Paula all of which I found more intriguing than the film.
Special Features:
- Introduction by Jess Franco (1 min)
- Jess Franco on Contemporary Filmmaking (18 min)
- Jess Franco on Paula-Paula (9 min)
Special Features:
- Introduction by Jess Franco (1 min)
- Jess Franco on Contemporary Filmmaking (18 min)
- Jess Franco on Paula-Paula (9 min)
It's just a sad cinema-fact that with age most director's potency seems to fade, not everyone can be George Miller making Mad Max: Fury Road in his seventies, that's the exception. Some of my favorite directors, George A. Romero, Tobe Hooper and Wes Craven among them, made lesser films in their later years, but I loved that they kept chugging along, just like Jess Franco did, he kept at it till he died in 2013, and that's cool. I do not recommend this film unless you're an absolute Jess Franco nut that needs to own every last film he made, like a very serious completist. During one of the interviews on the disc Franco suggests Paula-Paula (2010) might be one of his three weirdest films, now with that I can agree.
