Let’s say you’re Jess Franco. You’ve just wrapped a dozen films, half of which were probably shot on the same beach using the same three actresses and a single pair of fishnet stockings. You’re bored, possibly drunk, and someone hands you a stack of cash, a topless actress, and a dog-eared copy of the Marquis de Sade’s Philosophy in the Bedroom. What do you do?
You crank out Eugenie—a film that promises “a journey into perversion” but delivers more of a slow-motion wade through half-baked eroticism, limp existentialism, and enough gauzy zoom shots to make your camera operator sue for harassment.
This 1970 mess is Jess Franco attempting to marry Sade’s deviant intellect with Euro-sleaze aesthetics, and the result is like watching a philosophy major try to direct softcore porn while reading SparkNotes. It’s not sexy, it’s not smart, and it sure as hell isn’t coherent.
Let’s start with Eugenie herself, played by Marie Liljedahl, a wide-eyed Scandinavian porcelain doll who spends most of the movie either naked, semi-naked, or trembling in anticipation of being one or the other. Her version of “character development” involves wandering into situations, looking mildly distressed, and occasionally gasping like someone’s offered her a second helping of dessert.
The plot—or what passes for it—is as follows: Eugenie, a teenage girl so innocent she practically glows, is invited to an island retreat by her libertine stepmother (Maria Rohm), where she is gradually introduced to a life of sensual awakening, sadomasochistic ritual, and philosophical pillow talk delivered with the pacing of a dental seminar. She’s seduced, drugged, and paraded around like a prize-winning lamb, while everyone else gropes, lectures, and monologues about “freedom” and “morality” like bored grad students who’ve done way too much mescaline.
And just when you think, “Okay, this is softcore trash, but maybe it’ll pick up,” Jess Franco throws in some pretentious voiceover from a character who may or may not be real—played by Christopher Lee, of all people. Yes, the same Christopher Lee who played Dracula, Saruman, and Count Dooku now appears as a Sadean narrator-slash-editorializer who stares into the camera with a look that says, “I was in The Wicker Man once. Please help me.”
Lee solemnly pontificates about the evils of censorship and the virtues of unshackled desire like he’s reading from a brothel-themed encyclopedia. Franco cuts to him periodically, because nothing interrupts the flow of erotic cinema quite like a 6’5” Englishman in a turtleneck reciting pseudo-intellectual doom poetry.
And then there’s Franco’s direction—which, to put it kindly, feels like he was filming through a bong cloud. Every frame is dipped in Vaseline. The camera drifts lazily over bodies, fabrics, and marble statues like it’s looking for meaning and finding none. Half the film is shot through sheer curtains or fog filters, and the rest is zoomed in on eyes, thighs, or cleavage like Franco’s trying to start a new form of Morse code using nipples.
Scenes begin and end with no structure, no urgency, and no purpose. The dialogue floats like cigarette smoke in a closed car. You’re never quite sure who’s talking or why, and even when you do, the answer is never interesting. The sex scenes—which should be the film’s bread and butter—are so tepid and slow you’ll find yourself checking your watch between pelvic thrusts.
There’s one scene where Eugenie is tied up, blindfolded, and ceremonially undressed while an older couple watches and sips wine like they’re judging a cheese competition. It should be disturbing, titillating, something. Instead, it just drags on with the enthusiasm of a CPR training video, accompanied by lounge music that sounds like it was composed by a stoned harpsichordist on a ferry boat.
And speaking of the music—good lord, the music. Franco’s usual jazz noodling is replaced with sleepy flute melodies and sensual bongo riffs that feel less like background score and more like your uncle trying to seduce a mannequin. At one point, the music tries to be sinister—during a supposed orgy scene—but it’s drowned out by the sound of Franco’s camera tripping over itself and the collective sigh of the audience.
What makes Eugenie especially maddening is that it thinks it’s saying something. You can feel Franco desperately trying to elevate the material—quoting de Sade, staging scenes like Renaissance paintings, inserting long silences meant to imply depth. But it’s all surface-level provocation wrapped in pretentious gauze. It’s the cinematic equivalent of someone misquoting Nietzsche at an orgy and expecting applause.
Maria Rohm, as Eugenie’s corrupting influence, does her best, gliding through scenes like she’s perpetually two glasses of wine deep and quietly judging everyone. She’s the only one with a hint of presence, but Franco gives her nothing to do beyond smugly recline and occasionally dab Eugenie’s forehead like a Victorian vampire mom.
And let’s not ignore the film’s central hypocrisy: it preaches liberation but fetishizes innocence. Eugenie is less a protagonist than a canvas for other characters’ perversions. The film pretends to be about her journey but never gives her any agency. She’s just a vessel—wide-eyed, docile, and perpetually confused—while the older characters monologue about the glory of corruption. It’s exploitation masquerading as art, wearing a fake beard of philosophy.
By the time the film limps to its ambiguous ending, with Eugenie either dead, dreaming, or transformed into a libertine herself (who knows? who cares?), you’re left with a movie that thinks it just took you on a daring voyage into the heart of depravity. In reality, it shoved you into a velvet armchair, whispered half-formed quotes from The Decameron, and rubbed scented oils on your temples until you passed out from boredom.
Verdict: Eugenie is a sluggish, pseudo-intellectual softcore snoozefest that mistakes heavy breathing and literary name-dropping for depth. It’s not transgressive. It’s not philosophical. It’s a beige-colored shrug in corsets and candlelight. Watch only if you’ve lost a bet, or if you need something to make Franco’s Vampyros Lesbos look like a masterpiece in comparison.
