Radley Metzger – Therese and Isabelle (1968)
Two young girls experience awakening sexuality in the heated atmosphere of a Swiss girls’ boarding school.
Eric Henderson @ Slant Magazine wrote:
“The lush Therese and Isabelle presents a portrait of lesbian romantic bliss that’s refreshingly indifferent to the context of patriarchy. The titular boarding school girls don’t turn to each other because they intend to rebuff the callousness or insensitivity of men (as Alley Cats’s Irena seems to), and neither does their sexual bond form out of necessity due to a lack of male contact (the coffeehouse down the street provides ample opportunity for both to attract the attention of horny—and sensitive—French students). So, with all due efficacy towards the political value of indignant lady anarchists, Metzger focuses his concerns on a more effervescent level: one of remembrance of a love lost (nudged forth by Georges Auric’s swooning, enraptured Peyton Place-esque score).
Therese and Isabelle is a delicately-structured lament, flashing between the present day Therese, who is shown mournfully wandering the halls of her alma mater, and back 20 years to her great psychological debut into the world of lesbianism under the spell of the blonde free spirit Isabelle. (It’s unclear as to whether or not the present day Therese remains homosexual, and Metzger reportedly scrapped an alternate ending that showed Therese’s husband waiting outside the school grounds.) Metzger juggles the two chronologies with subtle parallel movements and edits, and the sense of failure and hurt hangs over each blissful reminisce. Metzger would go on to direct far more explicit films without sacrificing eroticism, but he rarely had as powerful a helping hand as the lubricated vocal chords of Essy “Purr” Persson, whose soft, epiglottal delivery of the film’s reams of descriptive frippery during sex scenes move visual suggestion into sensual ecstasy. And the total lack of irony that characterizes the film (emotional verité) remains a welcome anomaly.
Therese.and.Isabelle.1968.DVD.AC3.2.0.x264-SaL.mkv
General
Container: Matroska
Runtime: 1 h 57 min
Size: 1.52 GiB
Video
Codec: x264
Resolution: 688x276 ~> 688x305
Aspect ratio: 2.25:1
Frame rate: 23.976 fps
Bit rate: 1 649 kb/s
BPP: 0.362
Audio
#1: English 2.0ch AC-3 @ 192 kb/s
https://nitro.download/view/2E2B30EECE36896/Therese.and.Isabelle.1968.DVD.AC3.2.0.x264-SaL.mkv
Language(s):English
Subtitles:None
