BLUE NUDE

Blue Nude

Don't get too excited, dear Reader. BLUE NUDE isn't some trashy Italian epic. Hell, it isn't even an exploitation film. By all accounts, I shouldn't even be reviewing it for this site. It isn't filled with violence or sex. It isn't sleazy or confrontational. Look far and wide and you'll barely find anything written about it. It is, by any standard, a forgotten film. This would be excusable if it were a bad film but it isn't. The problem with BLUE NUDE is that it seems to promise something that it has no intentions on delivering and, as a result, carries very little weight after the credits have rolled. Thankfully, the overall experience outweighs the hurried and disappointing ending.


Blue Nude

For exploitation fans living outside of New York City - and especially for those born in the 1980s - the idea of 42nd Street, the grindhouse mecca of the world, is very alluring. It's also generally wrong. If reading Sleazoid Express, the wonderful, groundbreaking fanzine created by Bill Landis, has taught me anything it's that one must resist the temptation to slip on rose-colored glasses when thinking of the Deuce. It was a nasty, dirty and sometimes dangerous affair to travel those streets and sit in those theaters. Having been to NYC several times since my teenage years, I'm always amazed at how different the place looks now from the way it looked in the films shot there during the 1970s and early 1980s. Watching MANIAC, for example, is like taking a trip back in time to a very different place - I'm sure I'll get mail from New Yorkers telling me I'm wrong for saying that. Now, in full disclosure, I'm not a big fan of NYC, or ANY big city for that matter, but I will admit to being immediately interested in any film that allows me to have a glimpse of 42nd Street during it's heyday.


BLUE NUDE tells the tale of Rocco, an Italian living in NYC on a temporary visa. He wants to be an actor and a screenwriter but there are no doors open for him. He takes on odd jobs here and there - stripping, walking dogs, etc. - before stumbling into his first acting gig in a low budget porno. He meets Lilly, a seasoned porno actress, and is quickly smitten. The two of them begin a relationship. Neither one is particularly happy but they are both content with biding their time doing shitty work for shitty pay until they can move on to better things. Rocco manages to get his screenplay into a producer's hands and begins, tentatively, to move forward optimistically. Unfortunately for Rocco, just as things are starting to look up, he is seduced by a young girl - much younger than he thought - as part of a blackmail scheme headed by the girl's father and a crooked cop.


I'll stop there. No need to go any further.


Blue Nude

BLUE NUDE is a drama, through and through. It is slow and it is talky but it is carried off in a way that draws you in through subtle repetition of scenes and genuinely likeable characters. Given today's present economy, it's not too hard to find sympathy for people who honestly want to do better and be better but cannot seem to get the needed break to do so. Both Rocco and Lilly are nice people, burdened by their environment, and the film doesn't make any excuses for the mistakes and choices they make. It doesn't judge them or turn it's nose up at them. It deals with it's characters in a very straight-forward, honest manner.


The performances on display are all surprisingly good. Rocco is played by Gerardo Amato, an actor I recognize only from TWILIGHT OF LOVE with Pam Grier, and Lilly is played by hardcore veteran Susan McBain - the rest of the cast is largely a collection of unknowns but genre regular Giacomo Rossi-Stuart makes an appearance as does Wade Nichols, Carter Stevens, Al Levitsky and R. Bolla, all hardcore actors at the time. While neither character is very complex or nuanced, their performances lend a certain degree of empathy and interest to the proceedings. The relationship their characters share is both tender and tragic and the performances they give sell it easily and credibly. It's clear that the film's director Luigi Scattini - who made THE BODY with Carroll Baker - cares about these characters. By the time the film reached it's tragic ending, I did to and the final ten minutes of the film struck me as incredibly depressing and almost heartbreaking.


Blue Nude

I can't say if you would enjoy this film or not, dear Reader. I could have easily pulled ten or twenty films from the bookshelf full of DVDs behind me and written about any of them. In fact, any of those films would have been more appropriate for this site. But I enjoyed this movie a great deal and I figured this review might spark your interest. If anything, you will enjoy the wonderful on-the-streets cinematography and maybe, like I did, you'll find yourself pausing the film just to soak up the sight of all those marquees with fan favorite titles written across them - plus, I shit you not, a character actually references, in a roundabout kinda way, the Shackleton/Findlay nightmare that is the movie SNUFF. I don't honestly think you'd be wasting your time by tracking this film down. Just don't expect anything trashy.


Recommended.