< Hard Love

Details
Released: 1975
Director: Serge Korber as John Thomas
Notes: Les Films du Berry, Korthou Productions (Paris), Columbus Productions (Paris) and Degrees International (Belgium) / France Continental Films; 98 mins.
Alternate Titles
  • Bourgeoise et salope Métal'X video title, hard version, 84 mins.
  • Désir intense ? hard version, Sperma Video release 1987
  • Désirs intenses 1987 hard version, Sperma Video
  • Hard Work
  • Ijsk(l)ontjes voor een hete bliksem Belgium, Flemish title
  • Jeunes filles perverses
  • La Vie sentimentale de Walter Petit
Actresses
Notes and Reviews

Males -

  • Richard Darbois plays Walter Petit
  • Marcel Dalio plays Dr. Gustave Friedman and plays the butler
  • Pierre Danny plays René Pavublavici, the director of the advdrtising agency
  • Jean Pierre Lombard plays Hubert
  • Bernard Musson plays Gaston, the neighbour
  • Michel Derain plays Marcel
  • Manu Pluton, credited, but not in the shorter version viewed
  • Cyril Val uncredited, in orgy of group of friends
  • Gabriel Pontello uncredited, in orgy of group of friends
  • Charlie Schreiner uncredited, in orgy of group of friends
  • Carmelo Petix uncredited, in orgy of group of friends and in foursome in hotel room
  • Patrick Lyonnet (so identified in Le Dico, but questionable ID - face difficult to see) uncredited, in foursome in hotel room

Walter Petit is a young publicity agent who works for a weapons factory. He fantasises much about women, but when it comes to performance, he is impotent - although all the secretaries are in love with him. Eventually he gets cured, falls in love with Beatrice, the daughter of his boss and finally marries her.

The plot gets complicated with all the fantasies of Walter, which are shown in the film. They make the film very lively. Also, there are small x-inserts in this movie and a long orgy-scene where Walter is present, but leaves half-way through. There is Cyril Val who has anal sex with Marlène Myller (or at least the viewer is intended to think so). There are at least ten people on one bed in the orgy scene; also next there is a fleshy scene with six girls together (!) not doing very much though [this is not in the Metal'X version]. The Sperma video-edition also states Beatrice Harnois as being in this movie, but I did not recognize her [not in Metal'X version either].

This movie is somewhat similar to Les 11.000 Verges and has a pleasant somewhat surreal atmosphere.

A joyous romantic fantasy with hard core inserts.

Demster [edited].

The storyline is clearly inspired by James Thurber's story The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, but this is not acknowledged in the credits, for which he would probably have been grateful.

The following account is based on the video release called Bourgeoise et salope.

In a pre-credit sequence, Anne Libert is seen carrying candlesticks a staircase to her bedroom. Darbois (Walter Petit) appears wearing top hat and cape and carrying a cane. They have (simulated) sex on her bed. Periodically the window is shown, alternating between darkness and sunlight, implying that the lovemaking session goes on for several days. Then her husband (Bernard Musson) appears and fires a blunderbuss at them.

Walter wakes up from this dream because someone is knocking at the door to his apartment. It is his neighbour, Gaston (Musson), who wants to borrow his keys. Rose, Musson’s wife (Anne Libert), looks out of the door of the apartment opposite and smiles at Walter. Walter goes back inside his apartment to shave, but he accidentally drags an electrical appliance into his bath and knocks out the elcctricity in the whole building.

The credit sequence follows with the video title inserted over the original title in a different font (an early computer-generated affair) and different background colour.

The film resumes with a continuation of the previous scene. Gaston returns the keys and goes off to work. His wife invites Walter into her apartment (now lit by candles) and tries to seduce him without success - he can’t get it up even though he has been dreaming about making love to her and keeping it up for days. This sets the tone for the first half of the film. Darbois plays a Walter Mitty character who has vivid dreams about the women he meets and of himself as a great lover while in reality all the women he meets fancy him enormously, but he can do little about it when the moment of truth arrives.

Walter flees his neighbour’s apartment and goes off to work (at an advertising agency). Before he gets in his car he sees an attractive brunette traffic warden (Claudine Beccarie). He day dreams about having sex with her in the street (hardcore inserted close-ups) and she places a ticket on his windscreen while he is dreaming about her.

He arrives at his office (in a huge skyscraper) and greets the receptionist, Josephine (Danièle Negre) and the other girls in the office - Solange (Martine Grimaud) and Nathalie (Pamela Stanford). He is asked to see his boss (Pierre Danny) and present his ideas about the latest advertising campaign. While his boss is responding, Walter dreams about making love (simulated) to his boss’s secretary, Josy (Anne Varèze), while big game hunting in Africa (in a tent at night, wearing safari outfits including pith helmet).

The dream seems to continue into another, but this may be an editing error (or my mis-use of the fast forward button) as this next dream takes place while Darbois is away for the weekend with the receptionist, Josephine. He dreams of rescuing her from the sea and giving her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation leading to a softcore sex scene on a beach. then he wakes up sitting in a deckchair next to her. The scene moves on to them eating in a restaurant - with a nod towards the sexy eating scene in Tom Jones - and then in bed in their room where the naked Josephine inexplicably fails to arouse him. The room-service maid (Danielle Altenburger) arrives with coffee and Walter dreams about having sex with her there and then (simulated). This gives him an erection, but he loses it almost at once, to Josephine’s frustration. So she gets dressed, but while doing so notices that somthing is going on in the adjoining room. (Apparently she can see through the wall as she says ‘Nathalie?!’) She then looks though the keyhole of a connecting door and watches a hardcore foursome involving Claudine Beccarie, Pamela Stanford (Nathalie), Carmelo Petix and another male whose face is very difficult to see clearly, but is identified in Le Dico as Patrick Lyonnet. (Conceivably this could be archive footage.) After a brief dream set on a boat in a storm, in order to stimulate Walter, Josephine now pretends to drown in the bath and Walter joins her there (both clothed), but breaks off from the attempt to make love to her because he has an inspiration about the ad campaign. Walter and Josephine return to the city.

First thing Monday morning in the office the four female staff gather to gossip about Josephine’s disappointing weekend with Walter and place a drawing of an erection going limp on his desk. Walter has a vengeful day dream about whipping Josephine in a dungeon and being such a virile stud that he can bang a gong using only his erection (another in joke for film fans referring to the introduction to Rank films).

Walter leaves the office and goes to see a psychologist, Dr. Gustav Friedman, but the door is answered by the doctor’s female locum Wanda (Monique Vita) who conducts a therapy session with him. She asks him to recount a dream. We see him dressed as a pirate rescuing Wanda on a boat and then, in a dungeon, having a sword fight with Dr. Friedman. He rescues the girl again and makes (simulated) love to her on a cliff ledge above the waves. (In real life in the consulting room Wanda is now getting turned on.) The dream morphs into a scene on the green of a golf course on top of the cliffs. The girl is being pursued by two undertakers with shotguns. Walter’s putter turns into a shotgun and he shoots them and rescues the girl. The scene of the dream again changes as walter makes love to Wanda on a four-poster bed. By now in the consulting room the turned-on psychologist discovers that Walter has an erection. She strips off and gives him blow job and they have sex (body-doubled).

Walter returns to the office in post-coital triumph and makes love to Josephine (simulated, fast-motion) on her desk. He then presents his plan for the ad campaign to the boss to great acclaim. He is invited to his boss’s mansion in the country for the weekend. The door is opened by his boss’s daughter, Béatrice (Laure Cottereau). He is taken into a room where his boss introduces him to a man and woman, Cookie (Anna Douking) and then the boss’s wife, Irène (Véra Valmont) who apparently can cook only spaghetti. Walter dreams of cavorting innocently in the woods with Béatrice, but is seduced by Cookie in the bathroom (simulated).

Walter waits for Béatrice outside her college and they take a walk in the park and sit on a couple of seats only to be driven away by an officious older woman (Jacqueline Doyen) asking for the fee for the use of the chairs.

Back in the office, the girls gossip about Walter again, but now in a more positive way. When he arrives and sits down Nathalie crawls along the floor to give him a blow job under his desk which proceeds to full sex (possibly simulated). Then Walter meets Solange outside the office and they go off in an open-topped sports car with a group of friends to a hardcore orgy in a small room. Half way through Walter realises it is not for him and leaves. There are so many people crowded into such a small space in this orgy that it is difficult to identify them all. Le Dico names other two women, but I could see only one and this did not look like Corinne Lemoine. She may be Muriel Vidal, but I do not know what that performer looks like and anyway the face could not be clearly seen, except that she seemed very similar in looks to Marie-José Pontello.

Next weekend Walter visits his boss again and is accompanied by Solange. However, Walter roams the grounds in search of Béatrice while Solange has a tryst with the boss (not shown), almost discovered by Irène who is looking for her husband. Walter finds Béatrice on a swing and they go for a walk in the grounds ending up in a greenhouse where they make love (simulated) almost discovered by Irène who is still looking for her husband.

Walter and Béatrice become engaged and get married.

Film information updated with help from Dictionnaire des films français pornographiques et érotiques 16 et 35 mm.

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