Ay, Caramba. From the land of Coffin Joe, Sergio Mendes and Pelé, comes this Brazilian sex odyssey, charting the steamy adventures of its titular heroine. Having spent most of her childhood in Europe, Giselle (Alba Valeria) returns to her well to do family in Brazil for her summer vacation. As Gis has a seemingly endless supply of sexual energy, she wastes no time in seducing Angelo (Carlo Mossy) her father’s ranch hand, as well as her own stepmother Haydee (Maria Lucia Dahl). Gis then decides to form a tag team with her stepmum and the two women take on Angelo at the same time. The arrival of Giselle’s effeminate stepbrother Serginho (Ricardo Faria) proves no obstacle to the amour, as Giselle discovers when she catches Serginho making out with Angelo. Far from being appalled or offended, Giselle just shrugs, laughs, takes off her clothes then joins in a bi-sexual threesome with her stepbrother and the hardworkin’ Angelo.
Not everyone is so friendly towards poor Serginho though. When Angelo takes him to a local bar they are immediately set upon by three thugs who taunt and sexually come on to Serginho, forcing Angelo to defend him in a fight scene rendered in ridiculously slow motion. Sadly we haven’t seen the last of these three troublemakers, who return later on in the film to ambush the protagonists at gunpoint. The three thugs then decide to rape Giselle and Haydee, as well as going all Deliverance by raping Serginho as well. Quickly becoming disillusioned by her privileged surroundings, Giselle falls in love with Ana (Monique Lafond) a lesbian Communist, and leaves the family home having set her heart on helping Brazil’s poor and spreading the socialist message. Actions that have a particularly devastating effect on Haydee, who sees Ana as a love rival and politically undesirable. “It’s upsetting to see you looking at that little Communist” complains Haydee, emphasizing the word ‘Communist’ as if it were an extreme expletive. Senseless violence however puts an end to Giselle’s political awakening and sends her back to the drama of her sex crazed family.
Few sexploitation films will leave you quite as speechless as Giselle, a film with a truly uninhibited attitude towards all forms of sex. Literally anything goes here, and while it is not uncommon for sexploitation movies, especially those of a European variety, to tackle themes of incest, rape and lesbianism, Giselle fearlessly ventures into the more traditionally off limits taboo of homosexuality. Displaying no reservations about erotizing its male stars as much as its female ones. It’s as if director Victor Di Mello was laying down the gauntlet to his audience over just how open minded and sexually liberal they really were. Di Mello seems equally interested in testing his audience’s tolerance towards the Scott McKenzie song ‘San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)’. Victor Di Mello must have really, really loved that song. An easy listening cover version of which is repeated over and over and over on the film’s soundtrack. Rightly or wrongly Giselle’s soundtrack choices (when it isn’t using ‘San Francisco’ its drawing on similar, easy listening versions of The Beatles’ ‘Yesterday’ and ‘Let It Be’) paint its director as being something of an ageing hippie, still preaching about free love and the gentle people with flowers in their hair. “The world is full of beauty if we can only see it” gushes Giselle’s stepmum.
In America the film was re-titled ‘Her Summer Vacation’ and apparently marketed as a Porky’s/Lemmon Popsicle type romp, and c’mon…admit it you’d just love to be a fly on the wall when the insanity of Giselle unfolded for an audience expecting frat humour and harmless T&A. What did they make of the Angelo/Serginho action, the socialist tub-thumping or the explicit footage of horses being mated, which opens the film à la Borowczyk’s The Beast….I’m amazed heads didn’t explode. Giselle also contains a dubbing faux-pas that never fails to crack me up, when Serginho introduces his black lover Bobo (Vinicius Salvatori) as being “a male nurse in the merchant marine”. Now, I’m sure that line was meant to be “in the merchant marines”, but given the bi-sexual free for all that ensues, its probably safe to assume that Bobo was no stranger to being in a merchant marine anyway.
Giselle is the kind of movie that makes you glad physical copies, as well as posters and stills from the film are still out there, because no one would buy into the existence of this film based on oral evidence alone. Its storyline, and character’s behavior, are so outlandish that you’d be forgiven for dismissing it as a dirty minded tall tale…but trust me amigo, Giselle is very much real.
If you’re looking to experience what it’s like to chance upon something that is way, way off the usual cinematic path, then Giselle is just the ticket. The exotic Brazilian locations, blatant cover versions of well known hits, outbursts of violence and bi-sexual agenda all lend the movie the allure of danger and lawlessness. No matter when and where you encounter Giselle, it will always feel like you’re watching it in some smoke filled backroom, with the film being shown via a noisy projector and an audience made up of sweaty, tequila drinking men, all of whom look like Danny Trejo.
Inherently sleazy as Giselle is, it is also a film with an infectious joie de vivre about it. A celebration of life, love, friendship, and sexuality that is hopelessly enamored with its main characters, especially Angelo. The impression you’re left with is that Di Mello really wanted the film to be centered around Angelo, but that chasing the ‘Emmanuelle’ craze forced his hand into following Giselle around instead. Everyone in this film loves Angelo… Giselle, Serginho, Haydee. The film is flat out infatuated by him…Angelo, the fighter…Angelo, the lover…Angelo, the friend…Angelo, the loyal employee. Even Giselle’s father Luccini (Nildo Parente) has the hots for Angelo, on account of the fact that when they were teenagers Luccini and Angelo’s father were lovers, and Angelo reminds Luccini of all the good times he had with Angelo Sr. An admission that is actually one of the more wholesome aspects to Luccini, whose sexual tastes form the basis of the film’s big revelation. How can we put this?....Luccini has ‘weaknesses’ not dissimilar to the guy who directs all those Jeepers Creepers movies. While Giselle doesn’t exactly celebrate this side to Luccini (nor thankfully depict it), the film’s blasé, often jokey attitude towards it is a shocker. ‘Problematic’ has become something of an overused word when it comes to describing movies from the 1970s and 1980s, but in Giselle’s case it feels just about right.
Victor Di Mello was a prolific director of Brazilian erotica, but Giselle seems to have been the only film of his to gain much exposure outside of Brazil. I must embarrassingly confess that my own encounters with Brazilian sexploitation cinema begin and end with Giselle. Although the recent Brazilian TV drama ‘Magnifica 70’ (currently available to stream on All 4) which is set in the country’s sex film industry of the 1970s, did provide a crash course, not only in the ‘pornochanada’ film genre, but in the era of military rule, police brutality and politically motivated film censorship that Giselle emerged from. Seemingly well versed on its subject matter…Victor Di Mello gets a name check at one point, there is a Coffin Joe reference in the first episode and Angelo himself…actor Carlo Mossy has a supporting role, Magnifica 70 frequently touches upon how the government controlled censorship board would frequently force their will upon the makers of pornochanada. Threatening them with bans or persecution, if their films didn’t extol the virtues of the military, patriotism and the Church. Evidence of which can be found in Giselle, the Brazilian release version of which opens with footage of an atomic bomb blast and text lamenting the decline in morals and warning of ‘Sodoma ‘e Gomorra’. Not dissimilar to the ‘this film is dedicated to those who are disturbed by today’s lax moral codes ’disclaimer that opens our very own House of Whipcord, and equally disingenuous. It all comes across as a heavy handed, but clearly necessary, attempt to appease the Brazilian censor.
In Britain the film was cut down for both its theatrical and pre-cert video release, which removed part of Serginho’s seduction of Angelo, scenes of male and female rape, a drug fuelled flagellation scene and Haydee goading Angelo into beating her. Missing also from the British version is a lengthily scene of Angelo picking up Serginho at a train station, presumably for pacing reasons. The cover versions of The Beatles’ ‘Let It Be’ and ‘Yesterday’ were also removed from the soundtrack and replaced with generic disco music, presumably for copyright reasons. No less of a hot potato in the 1990s, when Giselle was released on UK video in the post cert days its distributor Harmony video chose to remove 13 minutes and 36 seconds of footage from the film before submitting it to the BBFC, who cut it by a further 1 minute and 31 seconds. Today, finding the film in English and uncut doesn’t appear to be an easy task, even its nearly uncut Greek video release, which has all the Beatles tracks intact, trimmed out a scene where Angelo uses amyl nitrate and ends up whipping Giselle, Serginho and Bobo, much to their enthusiastic enjoyment.
Considering the turbulent times and place Giselle was born out of, its remarkable the amount of mischief Di Mello got away with here. For all of the fire and brimstone warning that opens it, the film doesn’t have a single conservative bone in its body. Giselle is 39 years old now, and it’s aged disgracefully, a shameless old hussy of a film that doesn’t care less what anyone thinks of it.
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