Love is a Splendid Illusion (1970)

1969, and love is in the air, especially in the offices of sexploitation film mogul Bachoo Sen.  Producer and distributor Sen would later become notorious, and somewhat of a figure of fun for the excessive use of the words ‘sex’ and ‘virgin’ in the titles of the films that Sen released through his English Film Company.  We are No Virgins, S for Sex, Diary of a Half-Virgin, Sex is My Game, Hot Bed of Sex, Sex is Beautiful, Virgin Lovers, and Sex and the Vampire being among the English Film Company’s releases.  Virgin and Sex might have become Sen’s buzzwords of choice, but in the late 1960s Sen appears to have put all his faith in the word ‘love’ when it came to success at the box-office.   Along with business partner Richard Schulman, Sen had enjoyed such a success with 1968’s Loving Feeling.  A sex drama that billed itself as “the sophisticated love film”.  Loving Feeling dealt with a popular disc jockey whose skirt chasing ways leads to his downfall.  Clearly realizing when he was onto a good thing, Sen followed this with Love is a Splendid Illusion…which is pretty much more of the same thing, another sophisticated love film, or son of the sophisticated love film if you will.  It even brings back the same leading man, Simon Brent, to play another philandering Sixties dandy, this time rather than being a hip, fashionable DJ, Brent is a hip, fashionable interior decorator called  Christian Dubarry…most of swinging London wants to have their homes dressed by Christian, and themselves undressed by the man himself.  

Christian however is a man torn between living life in the fast line- with all the parties, money and sex that were on offer to a fashionable interior decorator back then- and the call of respectability and conformity.  In well off suburbia, Christian has a house, a young son, and lives with its mother, although –shock, horror, don’t tell the local vicar- he and child’s mother, Amanda, aren’t a married couple, preferring to live in a common law marriage situation.  On the sly, Christian also has a blonde bit on the side called Debbie, who he financially supports and keeps at a fashionable pad in London.  While Christian scoffs at Debbie’s suggestion that Amanda too might have a bit on the side, the unhappy Amanda is indeed playing away from home with a city businessman called Bernard. 

 

In a way, Love is a Splendid Illusion does have something profound to say about the swinging London set as the early 1970s dawned.  A decade that saw their youthful lack of responsibility begin to fade away, replaced by parenthood, settling down, keeping up with the Joneses and the demands of the corporate world.  Christian resents the increasingly mundane, office based side of his career, as well as the corporate parties that he begrudgingly attends, which are populated by back stabbing, parasitic bores, who bitch about Christian’s declining popularity behind his back, but also lust after him in the same breath.  The bailiffs are also among Christian’s problems, with final demands being a regular fixture in the morning post.  In short, Christian is a man, who both sexually and financially has been spreading himself a little too thinly.  As one of the party goers puts it Christian’s problem is too many women and not enough work.  On an irresponsible whim, both Christian and Amanda decide to leave all their problems –and their child- behind them, in favour of a glamourus holiday in Italy.  Christian and Amanda, might have left the smog, high rise buildings, and daily grind of London behind them, but the switch to the sunny Mediterranean only exacerbates the problem of the couples’ wandering libidos.  

In an extremely unfortunate coincidence, the type that you rarely see outside of stage farces, Bernard just happens to be staying at exactly the same Italian hotel as the couple, and his ongoing affair with Amanda becomes all too apparent to Christian.  Whilst in Italy, there are also temptations of the French kind for Christian in the form of Michelle Howard, a young, flirty, French sexpot, and the trophy wife of Maurice, a dull, chronically complaining, middle aged Englishman.  Michelle is by far the most likeable in the film, and by far the sexiest too.  This character is though also the source of Love is a Splendid Illusion’s most implausible aspect, the relationship between Michelle and Maurice.  It is very hard to believe a young, fashionable and extremely sexual woman would ever have hooked up with such a miserable, dullard.  Maurice spends the majority of the holiday complaining about the heat and falling asleep in his sun lounger.  It is akin to Brigitte Bardot being married to Arthur from On the Buses, you can’t even imagine these two people being in the same room together, let alone being a married couple.  Maurice though, does get by far my favourite line in the film, when reminding Michelle that he taught her to speak English, he tells her “when we first meet the only word you knew was ‘yes’, and that was getting you into all kind of trouble”.   Michelle is played by French-Canadian actress Andree Flamand, who looks as if she should be related to Joan and Jackie Collins, but isn’t, curiously her female co-star Lisa Collings, who plays Amanda, has a name that sounds like she should be related to Joan and Jackie Collins, but again isn’t.  

 

As if there wasn’t enough going on to keep the dashing Christian all hot under the collar, he also finds himself drawn into the world of Sophie, an Italian high class prostitute who works at the hotel, entertaining the rich, well off old codgers who stay there. 

Love is a Splendid Illusion was one of few British films to receive much in the way of publicity during this period from Continental Film Review, a magazine that from the 1950s onwards had documented the art and erotic film scene of Europe, but tended to give home grown films the cold shoulder.  The likely reason that Love is a Splendid Illusion was one of few exceptions to the rule, is that this was a British attempt to emulate the type of continental erotic dramas popularized by the likes of Roger Vadim, Max Pecas and Radley Metzger - Metzger in particular.  A British film that drew on such influences, and attempted to drag the repressed British film industry in line with the likes of Pecas and Metzger therefore found a champion in Continental Film Review.  Even the poetic, philosophical title Love is a Splendid Illusion feels like it belongs to a foreign language, erotic film whose UK release title has been awkwardly translated into English.  The film did actually shed a few titles on its way to the big screen, it was initially known as Kiss and Don’t Tell, then became Bed and Don’t Tell before settling on Love is a Splendid Illusion.  Many years later in the late 1980s, when the film was re-released on UK video it acquired yet another title ‘Swedish Dream’….even though there is bugger all Swedish about it.  In order to capture that continental feel, Love is a Splendid Illusion even enjoyed some location shooting in Sanremo in Italy.  An uncharacteristically lavish touch for Bachoo Sen, who according to legend preferred to drive film directors home personally rather than cough up the money for a taxi.        

  

The passing of time has tended to rob Love is a Splendid Illusion of its once scandalous nature, but you can still appreciate how this film would have ruffled feathers back in its day, what with its portrayal of infidelity, people living in sin, and a non judgmental portrayal of high class prostitution.  For 1970, it is definitely pushing the boundaries of what could be seen on British screens in terms of sex and nudity.  Perhaps because sex films still needed to prove themselves as being ‘worthy’ to the censors and moral guardians of the day, Love is a Splendid Illusion does come on strongly as a self-consciously serious, thought provoking and sophisticated film, it is the type of film where every other line tends to end in someone being called ‘Darling’.  One poster for the film even goes so far as having a quote from a D.H. Lawrence novel on it.  Lawrence being a hip author to name drop back then- due to the famous 1960 obscenity trial over the publication of Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Ken Russell’s 1969 film version of Women in Love- especially if you wanted to portray yourself as being a daring challenger to the social mores of the time.  The Lawrence quote “sex isn’t sin” also gave Bachoo Sen the chance to get one of his two favourite words onto the poster as well.

Surprisingly Love is a Splendid Illusion is equally into pushing its male star, Simon Brent, as a sex symbol, as much as his female co-stars.  Displaying no signs of British reserve, or hang ups, when it comes to showing Brent’s body off onscreen, whether he is being mauled and manhandled by sexually predatory females or giving Inspector Montalbano a run for his money when it comes to the amount of times a character can go swimming in the Mediterranean sea.  Sexually, Christian is an unusually passive male figure.  In terms of sexual positions at least, women are mostly on top in this film, while Christian is putty in their hands, defenselessly thrashing around underneath them and melodramatically grasping at the bed sheets, very much the traditionally female role in movie sex scenes.  At one point Christian even flees from a sexual encounter with Sophie, only pausing at the door to tell her he’d rather they just remain good friends.  A far cry from the masculinity that was expected from male characters of the period.  Love is a Splendid Illusion is a film for those that like their men, pretty but vulnerable.   

The stills from both this film and Loving Feeling are unintentionally hilarious in this respect, often sidelining female cast members in favour of Simon Brent emoting in his underwear.  To the degree that you can’t help but wonder if in a unspoken, closeted manner these films weren’t discreetly being marketed to the type of gentleman who didn’t buy Films and Filming magazine for the articles, if –wink, wink- you know what I mean, ducky. 

There is a good case for Simon Brent being one of the true forgotten young actors of this era.  Brent was in allot, during a short amount of time, Loving Feeling, Love is a Splendid Illusion, the horror film Venom and the TV pilot Go Girl- then absolutely nothing for several years until a supporting role in Keep It Up Downstairs in 1976, after that he completely disappeared from the acting world.  By rights, it feels as if  Brent should have had the career of such contemporaries as Ian Ogilvy, Richard O’Sullivan or Dennis Waterman, in reality though Brent is more the Simon Dee of British sex films, a popular guy who seemed to be everywhere at the end of the Sixties, but was rarely seen afterwards.

It is rather ironic that the people who this film is heavily into promoting, Simon Brent, Andree Flamand and Lisa Collings, who the film promotes both as an actress and singer, Collings being the singer of Love is a Splendid Illusion’s theme tune- didn’t really go on to do a great deal else.  Collings resurfacing several years later, in a brief, thankless role as a Soho prostitute who Tom Baker visits in The Mutations.  It tends to be the people who appear only fleetingly, or in secondary roles here that went on to longer lasting careers.  Love is a Splendid Illusion features an early screen appearance by Gay Soper, who’d later return to the British sex film, far more prominently, in The Ups and Downs of a Handyman, and has gone on to do tons of stage, sitcom and voiceover work, and I believe is still trending the boards…she was in Llandudno a few years ago in a stage version of Doctor in the House starring Robert Powell and Joe Pasquale.  We also get to see Fiona Curzon here, who went on to do lots of TV work, appear in films by Pete Walker and Lindsay Shonteff, was a hostess on 3-2-1 for a while, and like Gay Soper still seems to be sporadically acting.  Gay Soper’s appearance is strictly of the ‘blink and you’ll miss her’ variety, but Fiona Curzon has a bit more of a weighty role here as Christian’s secretary, and even gets a nice dramatic scene towards the end of the film, when her character forces her boss to face up to his selfish nature and the consequences of his actions.  Contrary to the idea that young actresses had to take their clothes off in movies to get along back then, both Gay Soper and Fiona Curzon remain fully clothed throughout Love is a Splendid Illusion, while others like Andree Flamand and Lisa Collins who do far more of the heavy lifting in terms of screen nudity, weren’t rewarded with substantial careers because of it.  All a bit unfair, really.

Bachoo Sen is another now largely forgotten figure, who back then was being heralded as the guy who was bringing allot of quality and eroticism to British cinema, and was openly being compared to the likes of Russ Meyer and Radley Metzger by Cinema X magazine, although the Metzger comparison is more accurate.  Cinema X was another champion of Sen, who put Loving Feeling on the cover of their very first issue, and also gave Love is a Splendid Illusion its fair share of publicity too.  Although I get the impression that Cinema X may have later become disillusioned with Sen, and possibly even have had a falling out with him at some point.  If any of Sen’s productions tend to be remembered these days, it’s one of his worse.  The messy, shot in Florida atrocity ‘Nightmare Weekend’, one of the most laughably bad horror films of the 1980s.  Nightmare Weekend’s script gives the impression that it was written by someone who taught themselves English by watching episodes of Dynasty, the film does little to disguise its makers background in pornography, it has a scene where a man is killed by a pair of knickers that come alive and force themselves down his throat, and by far the most memorable character in it is a glove puppet called George, who dispenses dating advice to the teenage heroine and sends flying metallic balls out to kill people.  Due to its high visibility on the Internet, and on Blu-ray, that one has become something of a rite of passage for the ‘so bad its good’ crowd, maybe not quite as much as Troll 2 or Manos: The Hands of Fate, but its slowly getting there.  Don’t get me wrong you can have fun with Nightmare Weekend on that level, but even so it is rather a travesty that Nightmare Weekend is what Sen is remembered for, while the earlier, classier acts like Love is a Splendid Illusion have fallen into obscurity.  Bachoo Sen, he could have had class, he could have been a contender, he could have been the British Radley Metzger - instead he’s the guy who brought us Nightmare Weekend and George the lovable glove puppet.

Seen today Love is a Splendid Illusion is inevitably, a bit of a swinging Sixties museum piece.  One that is easier to groove on visually, and be titillated by, rather than get caught up with on a dramatic level, with the exception of the sweet, naïve and sexy Michelle, it is pretty difficult to care a great deal about such a selfish and self-absorbed bunch of characters.  As you might expect from a film made at the tail end of the Sixties, and centered around a trendy interior decorator, it is quite the groovy onslaught of safari jackets, flash cars, soda siphons, Cinzano product placement, and dolly bird hostesses who’ve been spray painted silver for the occasion.  Love is a Splendid Illusion is one of few British sex films where the audience was justified in wearing dark glasses in the cinema on the basis of the film’s fashions and the interiors alone.  In the grand scheme of British sex films, this and Loving Feeling are now genre abnormalities.  Serious dramas with little in common with the out and out comedies that became prevalent and genre defining just a few years later.  As such, it is a fascinating ‘what if’ to consider how the British sex film would have evolved had it followed the Metzger-esque path of Love is a Splendid Illusion, rather than the slap n’ tickle route of Confessions of a Window Cleaner, Adventures of a Plumber’s Mate and other films that wouldn’t be caught dead billing themselves as the sophisticated love film or quoting D. H. Lawrence on their posters. 

 

Not that this approach put the British public off, Love is a Splendid Illusion played for around seven months at Soho’s Cameo Moulin cinema alone.  Along the way, the film received an unexpected bit of publicity, as well as a famous audience member, when the loveable Irene Handl was photographed attending the film for an article about her thoughts on the permissive society.  Despite her cuddly grandmother persona, Irene appears to have been no prude, or easily shockable, in the article she comes out in favour of pornography, flower children, rock n’ roll music and cited late night visits to the cinema to watch horror films as being among her hobbies. Quite the game old bird, Irene also wrote racy novels, was photographed taking tea with her nude co-stars on the set of Come Play With Me, and was even dared into doing a line of cocaine on the set of The Great Rock N’ Roll Swindle.  I wonder which was more fun, going to see Love is a Splendid Illusion at the Cameo Moulin cinema or doing cocaine on the set of The Great Rock N’ Roll Swindle? Only Irene Handl knew for sure, hopefully she had a blast doing both.