My Pleasure Is My Business

(Albert S. Waxman, 1975)
A constellation of dirty old men - sorry Al, but that includes you - orbit frantically around a black hole: however brilliant Xaviera Hollander's other humanitarian endeavours may have been, she Can. Not. Act. And this film was hardly designed to give her a workout; she's only really called on to stand there and be reacted to, but since she's stiff as a board and devoid of intensity she hardly resembles the icon of hegemonic sex-lib that she made of herself in print. Cast in the familiar mold of the European sex comedy - with lots of ugly guys in uniforms bugging their eyes out and shtick that's so old and rotten it's growing mushrooms - this plays off of Hollander's actual deportation dramas while frantically indicating that, unlike in real life, this character is not a 'hooker'. This conspicuously nervous revision, plus the faggot aide, plus the incessant lecherous male gaze, plus verbal humour that could have been garnished from the toilet at Sneaky Dee's, does not add up to a great deal of liberation. I admit the llama crossing got me, and maybe you are on the market for a topless Jayne Eastwood. But Tom Cochrane's song score does not live up to the man's usual standards (!!!) and on balance I'd rather read a year of Penthouse from cover to cover. In braille.