The Image, aka The Punishment of Anne, is one of those rare narrative films in the history of cinema to take sado-masochism at face value, offering it up to the viewer without judgment and placing it at the centre of the drama, rather than as a peripheral element in a genre story.
Based on a novel written pseudonymously by Catherine Robbe-Grillet (wife of Alain), The Image tells the story of a sophisticated French writer, Jean, who upon finishing a short story visits a literary soirée and renews his acquaintance with the ice-cool salon habitué Claire. Claire introduces him to her protégé, Anne, and it soon becomes clear that Anne is Claire's slave, trained like a dog to obey. Jean visits the Roseraie de Bagatelle with the two women, there witnessing the humiliation of Anne, whom Claire pierces with a thorn and makes squat on the ground to publicly urinate. A few days later, Jean runs into Anne in the street. The young woman is rude to him, so follows an extended period in which Claire offers Anne to Jean for punishment. Jean gets to enjoy the kinky games, in which Anne enjoys being publicly displayed, offered for sex with strangers, whipped and insulted. Things come to a head when Jean is invited into Clare's torture chamber, where Anne is pierced with hot needles and whipped on a medieval-looking contraption before being penetrated by Jean. Jean's missionary-position f**king of Anne is too much for Clare, who attacks him and drives him from the house. Anne announces that she is leaving Claire. The next morning, Claire visits Jean dressed as Anne and confesses her love for him after he orders her about and then screws her.
The enigmatic ending raises a number of questions as to what has gone before. Was Clare using Anne as a way of seducing Jean? When we first meet Clare, Jean's narration suggests that her invulnerable nature put paid to his desire for her – was Anne really a role Clare played all the while, an invention the two of them have come up with in order to make their relationship work? This makes retrospective sense of the early scene in which Clare shows Jean a number of images of Anne followed by an image of an unnamed other woman, who by implication is herself. Is the action of the film a visualisation of the content of their sado-masochistic game? This would suggest that the masochistic woman is a willed character the female subject in a heterosexual sex-game invents in order to satisfy her own and her partner's needs. It is also possible that the action of the film is the story which Jean says that he has just completed at the outset Whichever is the case, the film is enough to give most mainstream and, especially, liberal-minded viewers some qualms. There is no hardcore penetration shots, but there is non-simulated fellatio, cunnilingus and urination. The torture sequences are probably simulated, yet they pack a visceral intensity which may well have physical and emotional affects on the viewer, as well as raising various issues of feminism and power in representational and actual sado-masochism. The film is beautifully shot and directed by one of Metzger, one of erotic cinemas most advanced and professional stylists, but its visual beauty and technical acumen won't story some commentators dismissing the film as mere filth. Yet the film deserves to be treated as a serious cinematic account of a type of sexuality which may not be mainstream but which many viewers, male and female, will have an attraction towards. The film is offers both a turn-on for those viewers and a view of the dynamics of S&M relationships for anyone interested.
As a piece of 1970s cinema, the film now offers some amusement in terms of its costumes and music. Yet some of the images are intense and almost surreal in their power – Anne urinating on the rose, or erotically fingering a rosebud, are moments which offer a cinematic equivalent of the writings of Bataille or even the paintings of Georgia O'Keefe. As one of the few Golden Age of Porn available in a remastered DVD with an excellent transfer in a widescreen aspect ratio (Synapse's 2002 edition), it does offer a particularly good insight into the possibilities that 70s narrative porn were exploring in terms of hardcore elements combined with mainstream production values.
Based on a novel written pseudonymously by Catherine Robbe-Grillet (wife of Alain), The Image tells the story of a sophisticated French writer, Jean, who upon finishing a short story visits a literary soirée and renews his acquaintance with the ice-cool salon habitué Claire. Claire introduces him to her protégé, Anne, and it soon becomes clear that Anne is Claire's slave, trained like a dog to obey. Jean visits the Roseraie de Bagatelle with the two women, there witnessing the humiliation of Anne, whom Claire pierces with a thorn and makes squat on the ground to publicly urinate. A few days later, Jean runs into Anne in the street. The young woman is rude to him, so follows an extended period in which Claire offers Anne to Jean for punishment. Jean gets to enjoy the kinky games, in which Anne enjoys being publicly displayed, offered for sex with strangers, whipped and insulted. Things come to a head when Jean is invited into Clare's torture chamber, where Anne is pierced with hot needles and whipped on a medieval-looking contraption before being penetrated by Jean. Jean's missionary-position f**king of Anne is too much for Clare, who attacks him and drives him from the house. Anne announces that she is leaving Claire. The next morning, Claire visits Jean dressed as Anne and confesses her love for him after he orders her about and then screws her.
The enigmatic ending raises a number of questions as to what has gone before. Was Clare using Anne as a way of seducing Jean? When we first meet Clare, Jean's narration suggests that her invulnerable nature put paid to his desire for her – was Anne really a role Clare played all the while, an invention the two of them have come up with in order to make their relationship work? This makes retrospective sense of the early scene in which Clare shows Jean a number of images of Anne followed by an image of an unnamed other woman, who by implication is herself. Is the action of the film a visualisation of the content of their sado-masochistic game? This would suggest that the masochistic woman is a willed character the female subject in a heterosexual sex-game invents in order to satisfy her own and her partner's needs. It is also possible that the action of the film is the story which Jean says that he has just completed at the outset Whichever is the case, the film is enough to give most mainstream and, especially, liberal-minded viewers some qualms. There is no hardcore penetration shots, but there is non-simulated fellatio, cunnilingus and urination. The torture sequences are probably simulated, yet they pack a visceral intensity which may well have physical and emotional affects on the viewer, as well as raising various issues of feminism and power in representational and actual sado-masochism. The film is beautifully shot and directed by one of Metzger, one of erotic cinemas most advanced and professional stylists, but its visual beauty and technical acumen won't story some commentators dismissing the film as mere filth. Yet the film deserves to be treated as a serious cinematic account of a type of sexuality which may not be mainstream but which many viewers, male and female, will have an attraction towards. The film is offers both a turn-on for those viewers and a view of the dynamics of S&M relationships for anyone interested.
As a piece of 1970s cinema, the film now offers some amusement in terms of its costumes and music. Yet some of the images are intense and almost surreal in their power – Anne urinating on the rose, or erotically fingering a rosebud, are moments which offer a cinematic equivalent of the writings of Bataille or even the paintings of Georgia O'Keefe. As one of the few Golden Age of Porn available in a remastered DVD with an excellent transfer in a widescreen aspect ratio (Synapse's 2002 edition), it does offer a particularly good insight into the possibilities that 70s narrative porn were exploring in terms of hardcore elements combined with mainstream production values.