The Virgin of the Beaches 1976 English - The Awakening of Annie, A Virgem De Saint Tropez

You'll have a hard job staying awake ....

This is a pathetic waste of time, a travelogue posing as a sex film. The main character Annie suffered an attack by a client in a former job and has developed a frigidity towards men. Despite this she is happy to wander off with any man she bumps into but becomes hysterical when they make any moves on her. Annie Friedman as the main character wears the skimpiest outfits to show off her modest assets but they don't help her acting ability which are zilch. Most of the film is an advert for the sights of Saint Tropez and Rio including Macumba ceremonies, Nudist Beaches, Carnival and farming(!!!). Even these don't hold the attention and the film wanders off into complete aimlessness, just like it's heroine. Utterly, despairingly, dreadful!

The rightfully obscure French director Zygmunt Sulistrowski (you can call me "Ziggy") threw all the elements into the pot for his lousy sex opus AWAKENING OF ANNIE. When that time capsule for '60s and '70s porn is being stocked, right beside the classic works of Meyer, Sarno, the Findlays and Frost must go this compendium of gimmicks & clichés.

The Polish-born helmer was cranking this stuff out since the '50s, so he knew the terrain. What is amazing is how he managed to pack so much junk into one feature film - a dubious but impressive feat.

I'll tick off the genre staples and signposts Ziggy covers. Early on the viewer is treated to the fundamental principle of the Nudist Camp genre: heavy proselytizing about the importance of sun worship and how it can end all wars, racism, you name it, that's wrong with Western Civilization. This is posited by our antihero Mark, as he shows Brazilians a documentary he's filmed back in Saint Tropez, home of the allover tans. Carrying coals to Newcastle in more ways than one, he has transported semi-beautiful title roler Annie Friedmann across state lines from France to Brazil for his photo shoot anent his new book.

Poor English-dubbing is important for softcore, whether imported or domestic, so CHECK, that is fulfilled here. Syrupy musical score with dumb title tune -CHECK. Opening credits must have cute pseudonyms -no problem, as Ziggy signs on as Editor with the name Ikswort Silus -pretty clever. Beautiful girl "awakening" among the natives in an exotic locale a la EMMANUELLE or the later classics (see: VANESSA) of Hubert Frank, CHECK. Spicing up the action with stronger-sex insert footage to please those crass theater owners -CHECK: four scenes are interrupted for lengthy full-frontal-nudity (both sexes) couplings on the ground by thesps not in the film proper.

U-Turn: after very mild and innocuous travelogue material for the first three reels, so beloved back in the early '60s manifestations of the genre, Ziggy zig-zags into Rough terrain with a vengeance. Good guy Mark takes Annie to a remote Brazilian beach and tries to rape her. Escaping by the skin of her chinny-chin-chin, she decides to go off on her own in a strange land, immediately almost raped by a touchy feely young creep on the streets of Rio.

-SPOILERS AHEAD-

Fortunately she's saved by young Hugo, coincidentally ANOTHER budding photographer. He is a gentleman, but still wants to have sex with Annie, cueing her heartfelt flashback (softcore can't live without those) about how she was raped by a bald old pervert Pierre with a British accent. This blubber-lips guy is so repulsive looking that CHECK- the fans get their gross-out jollies.

Illogic: of course how can Annie be the Virgin of the film's title if Mr. Unclean raped her? So the lack of logic that is a must element of softcore scripting -CHECK. After pouring her heart out to him, of course Annie has sex with Hugo, but not as strong as the inserts. She agrees to go to the Amazon with him to help in his ethnographic photo shoot.

Their light plane is hijacked as film briefly goes into an action mode. Hugo is killed protecting Annie, and another woman on the plane gets raped. Inexplicably Annie is allowed to wander off on her own and the final reel is a Herman Hesse (!) styled abstract sequence representing the film's title content. Porn film turning artsy & pretentious with deeper meaning implied -CHECK.

Annie's mystical adventures in the amazon, dealing with all sorts of critters including snakes (Eden, anyone?) is handled in truly mundane fashion, not that any viewer is fully awake at this point. Having already delivered a fifth insert scene of a porn duo, Ziggy now takes the cake by including another blonde actress, with different looking breasts and facial features, in place of Annie, who could only be considered a lookalike to the dumbest of viewers. She masturbates and is fully nude -perhaps he couldn't talk Friedmann into doing this. Mismatched double -CHECK.

At any rate the real Annie builds a makeshift raft (very unconvincingly) and heads off down the Hesse-mandated river for an open ending.

I'm sure some idiotic satirist (I guess I would nominate Mike Myers or Chris Guest) could concoct some nonsense to encapsulate the wonderful softcore genre and its foibles, but until then AWAKENING OF ANNIE will have to do.

The definitive, though poor in quality, softcore sex film.

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