Review #289: 'Exponerad' (1971)

This Swedish "erotica" film from the 1970's is on the Grindhouse Project as The Depraved. A run-of-the-mill erotic fantasy film (that also owes much of it's narrative charms to Bunuel's classic Belle de Jour (1969)), is elevated by the elfin-like, nubile-innocent beauty of Swedish star Christina Lindberg. Her ethereal Lena, like Catherine Deneuve's Severine, displays an ambiguity in her sense of reality. We are never really sure if her sexual experiences throughout the film are fantasies or not. Lena drifts from Jan (Bjorn Adelly), a mummy's boy, and Helge (Heinz Hopf), a seeming playboy who offers her to friends who hangout at parties at his house.

The direction and cinematography are quite loose, giving it's mis-en-scene an elemental idea of realism. But with this technique, the result has very little suspense or atmosphere. Beginning with Lena taking off from boyfriend, Jan, hitchhiking out to a country house. She is picked up by a couple who go with her, and Lena imagines an encounter with the man of the couple. From here Lena simply goes back and forth between the two men who offer their utter love to her. She seems uninterested in either. We are reminded throughout the film that Helge took some nude photographs of her, and he attempts to blackmail her - something that never really happens, and some humanity suddenly comes from the sullen-seeming Lena, as she demands that she have them and the negatives.

Whilst the film has a reputation for it's depiction of sexuality, and now relatively soft sexual violence, it is rarely shocking. Also, with a very thin plot, it plods along in quite a pedestrian fashion. However, this is not to say that the time spent with this film is certainly no waste of time. Christina Lindberg is incredibly watchable. She radiates beauty, and has an incredible presence. So, with utter beguiled fascination, the film goes from being a two star reward, to a...


Directed by: Gustav Wiklund
Starring: Christina Lindberg, Heinz Hopf, Björn Adelly
Country: Sweden

Rating: ***

Marc Ivamy