Ah, the Marquis de Sade — a name that conjures up whispers of forbidden desires, sadistic mind games, and philosophical depravity wrapped in the velvet of 18th-century madness. And who better to translate his morally depraved visions to the screen than Jess Franco, the auteur responsible for such classics as Vampyros Lesbos, The Blood of Fu Manchu, and Zoom Lens: The Movie? So when Franco took a crack at Eugenie de Sade in 1973, a loose, sex-drenched retelling of Sade’s short story Eugénie de Franval, the result should’ve been depraved gold. Instead, it’s a lethargic, half-nude, wholly incoherent nap with a flute solo.
Let’s set expectations right: Eugenie de Sade is not erotic. It’s not psychological. It’s not dramatic. What it is — definitively — is a 90-minute stare into the abyss of Franco’s obsessions: softcore incest, people slowly walking into rooms, and shots of Soledad Miranda’s spiritual successor, Marie Liljedahl, looking troubled in lingerie.
In the film, Eugenie (Liljedahl) is a young woman seduced — intellectually, emotionally, physically, and spiritually — by her father, played by the perpetually half-asleep Paul Muller. She’s not just seduced. She’s mentored into the family business of murdering people for philosophical reasons, like a Craigslist version of Dexter run out of a French chateau. Franco tries to dress this up as a tale of moral corruption and Sadean liberation, but what you actually get is a series of scenes where Eugenie and her dad wear turtlenecks, drink wine, say things like “conscience is a fiction,” and then strangle someone off-screen.
Yes, the kills are all off-screen. In a Franco film. About murder. Starring a father-daughter killing duo. That’s like going to a Slayer concert and being handed a kazoo.
If you’re hoping for actual plot, don’t. There isn’t one. The film meanders like a horny goat in a foggy garden. Eugenie narrates the entire thing in breathy monotone, like she’s reading erotic poetry for a sleep meditation app. “He was my father… and yet not. He was my lover… and yet more.” She sounds like she’s trying to seduce a ghost. Her narration pops in every few minutes to remind us we’re still watching a movie, though Franco makes every effort to lull us into a coma with long takes of nothing happening.
Much of the runtime is padded with Franco’s favorite cinematic technique: “People sitting on couches, not speaking, while jazz plays.” Eugenie and Daddy Dearest sit in smoky apartments, stare out windows, maybe touch knees, and pontificate about existence. And when they do kill, it’s never suspenseful. They just show up at someone’s apartment, talk about morality for 10 minutes, and then one of them faints, falls over, or is politely strangled like they’re being tucked in for a long nap.
The incestuous relationship, which is supposed to be the transgressive core of the movie, has all the emotional heat of a tax audit. Franco never explores it — he just presents it like, “Yeah, they’re doing it. You gonna do something about it?” There’s no tension, no seduction, no conflict. Just Eugenie swanning around in lingerie and occasionally calling her father “darling” while rubbing his shoulder like he’s about to grill steaks.
Visually, Eugenie de Sade looks like Franco wandered around France with a camera and no script. The lighting veers between “moodily artistic” and “someone forgot to pay the electric bill.” He still refuses to use tripods, so the camera sways like a drunk mosquito at a jazz festival. You’ll get dizzy long before you get turned on.
Let’s talk about the music — which is, as usual for Franco, a fever dream of dissonant jazz, out-of-tune flutes, and organs played by someone who just discovered the “haunted” preset. Every time Eugenie begins contemplating her next kill, the music starts wheezing like a dying accordion. It’s supposed to be erotic. It sounds like your uncle’s garage band dying of embarrassment.
Marie Liljedahl — bless her Scandinavian heart — does her best, but she looks confused for most of the movie. You can see her trying to find something — anything — to latch onto in this material. Instead, she’s stuck monologuing about freedom while draped in fishnet and boredom. Paul Muller, playing the incestuous philosopher-dad-killer hybrid, delivers his lines like he’s waiting for someone to wake him up between takes. I’ve seen more energy in hostage videos.
The supporting cast? Irrelevant. Disposable victims with no personality, no dialogue, and no chance. One woman dies after being hypnotized by wine and ennui. Another just falls over dead mid-conversation. Franco has no time for character development. He’s too busy filming ankles through wine glasses.
By the time we hit the finale — if you can call it that — you’ll have stopped caring whether Eugenie escapes, dies, or merges with the couch she’s been lounging on for 45 straight minutes. There’s a showdown with the police, which is resolved in the most anti-climactic way imaginable: with narration. “He died. I did not.” Boom. Fade out. Jazz solo. The end.
Final Verdict: 1 out of 5 strangled French philosophers
Eugenie de Sade is what happens when Jess Franco gets ahold of deep philosophical material and then decides to ignore all of it in favor of close-ups of thighs and long scenes of slow-motion sadness. It’s dull. It’s disjointed. It’s like an erotic thriller directed by someone who neither understands thrillers nor finds eroticism all that interesting.
Watch it only if you’re conducting a thesis on European softcore cinema’s ability to make incest boring. Or if you’ve lost the will to live and want a movie to match your mood. Otherwise, leave Eugenie and her sweater-wearing father exactly where Franco left them: in a haze of jazz, narration, and deeply regrettable choices.
