The title promises sin. It promises secrets. It promises a nymphomaniac with a diary—presumably full of steamy confessions, scandalous liaisons, and unhinged sexual detours through 1970s Europe. What it delivers is a sad, soggy loop of softcore moaning, existential despair, and Franco’s camera leering at women like it lost its medication. Sinner: The Secret Diary of a Nymphomaniac (1973) is not just bad—it’s the cinematic equivalent of a hangover in satin sheets. You wake up halfway through it, disoriented, ashamed, and vaguely sticky.
Filmed under the pseudonym Clifford Brown (because even Jess Franco had the self-awareness to hide behind a fake name when directing this kind of mess), Sinner is a classic example of Franco’s “narrative-optional” approach to filmmaking. The story, if you can call it that without laughing, follows Linda (Muriel Montossé), a wide-eyed waif who careens through life like a drunk butterfly. She’s beautiful, sad, and deeply committed to doing absolutely nothing of consequence except sleeping with everyone who crosses her path and occasionally writing about it in a diary that seems to only exist when the film remembers the title.
We open with Linda dead. Yes, dead. Laid out like a lounge singer at her own wake, with a voiceover droning, “This is my story.” From there, we flash back to her life, which consists mostly of bad decisions, cigarette smoke, and erotic jazz. The narrative lurches forward like it’s wearing two left shoes. Linda’s descent into “nymphomania” appears to be triggered by… loneliness? Boredom? Reading a spicy horoscope? Who knows. Franco sure doesn’t.
She begins with an affair with a married man, then slides into a series of relationships that are less “passionate trysts” and more “mopey sex in dimly lit rooms.” There’s a lesbian affair with an older woman who might be her landlady, might be a ghost, might just be bored—played by the always naked and never interested Anne Libert. There’s a stint in a brothel. There’s a lot of staring into mirrors. There’s one guy who seems to exist solely to read Nietzsche quotes and smoke indoors. And, of course, there’s a diary entry every 25 minutes or so, delivered in voiceover so lifeless it sounds like it was recorded in a morgue by someone reading from a phone bill.
The eroticism is as limp as a wet noodle at a funeral. Franco films sex the way a tax auditor might film a music video—long, slow, and deeply suspicious. Bodies writhe, breasts bounce, and saxophones honk like wounded ducks, but it’s all so mechanical, so utterly joyless, that it makes late-night cable infomercials look downright orgiastic by comparison.
Muriel Montossé is beautiful, sure—but she has the emotional range of a potted plant left out in the rain. She doesn’t act so much as drift. Her Linda is a cipher—a mannequin with hair extensions who floats from bed to bed, occasionally pausing to write in her “diary,” which we never see, and which may just be a metaphor for Franco’s screenplay notes scrawled on cocktail napkins.
And let’s talk about the men. Good God, the men.
Every male character in Sinner looks like they should be arrested, audited, or exorcised. They all have greasy hair, open shirts, and the sexual energy of a damp sponge. They leer. They philosophize. They stroke Linda’s face like she’s a museum exhibit. One of them actually says, “You don’t need love, you need understanding.” No, pal. She needs a better agent and a restraining order.
Visually, the film is shot like Franco used a periscope dipped in Vaseline. Every scene is bathed in murky browns, sickly greens, and candlelight that makes you wonder if Franco forgot to pay the electric bill again. There are endless close-ups of eyes, thighs, and lips that say nothing, mean nothing, and lead nowhere. The editing is so choppy it feels like someone tried to assemble the movie using oven mitts and a roll of duct tape. Characters teleport between locations. Flashbacks interrupt flashbacks. At one point, Linda walks into a room, and it’s suddenly the next day. It’s like the film has short-term memory loss.
The soundtrack is, of course, sleazy lounge jazz mixed with the occasional synthesizer wail that sounds like an alien trying to whistle. It plays constantly, smothering dialogue and humping your eardrums with every thrust of Franco’s saxophone fetish. And every scene that involves nudity—and there are dozens—is dragged out to eternity, accompanied by music that makes you feel like you’re stuck in a strip club run by nihilists.
The film tries—half-heartedly—to pass itself off as a “tragedy.” It wants us to feel something for Linda. To mourn her. To understand her spiral into darkness. But we can’t. Because Franco doesn’t build a character—he builds a vessel for moaning and metaphors. There’s no arc. No soul. Just endless shots of her looking mournful in a thong while a flute solo mourns the death of art.
And then, just when you think it can’t get more ridiculous—Franco throws in a scene involving Linda crawling naked through a park while a voiceover says, “I wanted to be pure again.” It’s so unintentionally hilarious you’ll think it’s satire. It’s not. He’s serious. Jess Franco somehow believes he’s telling a story about the human condition, when in reality he’s just filming the world’s saddest softcore reenactment of Eat, Pray, Moan.
Final Verdict:
Sinner: The Secret Diary of a Nymphomaniac is neither sinful nor secretive nor remotely titillating. It’s a turgid, lazy, sleazy slog through Franco’s most self-indulgent obsessions, wrapped in pseudo-poetry and faux philosophy. It tries to be an erotic tragedy but ends up as a cinematic shrug—a film where nothing matters, everyone’s bored, and the only thing getting screwed is the audience.
Watch it only if you’re assembling a film festival titled Jess Franco’s Top 10 Sleep Aids. Otherwise, skip this diary—it’s all smudged mascara and bad lighting.
