THE KEY is another erotic drama from one of the kings of the genre, Tinto Brass. It's a film which is all about sex, sex, and more sex, with little plot otherwise, although the characterisation is better fleshed out than I imagined. The film has a classy, well-shot look which lifts it above sleazier movies by the likes of Jess Franco, but there's not much content and it does feel repetitive. It also feels a lot like one of the Japanese erotic movies that have been popular for the last fifty years. Frank Finlay is a surprise presence in this film; this British character actor is the last person you'd expect to see baring all for such a production, but there he is. Stefania Sandrelli gives the stand-out turn in a very explicit performance that must have been a real test of nerve for the actress.

Just from the opening scene it's evident that Tinto Brass is in a class of his own as a filmmaker. A beautifully shot period piece in which an ageing husband gets aroused by his wife falling for her daughter's boyfriend (kind of a ménage a quatre),simply because it arouses him to see his wife aroused. I'm not into cuckolding, but it's actually a sweet, romantic film in a way, just with a lot of visual fawning over women's exposed buttocks. Tinto Brass is like that. I've heard about him but not really seen much so far. I'm glad this is beginning to change.

As usual with Brass, this is a very classy sex film, with Hollywood-class production values. (This, I might add, is a rare exception, not the rule, among other sex-film makers. Radley Metzger is the only other director I can think of offhand whose sex films invariably have great production values.). Stefania Sandrelli is an absolutely stunning woman, with a gorgeously filled-out body, unlike the skinny-jinnies that many other directors are fond of. The film is set in Venice in 1940 and the locales are beautiful, while at the same time focusing on a "native's Venice," rather than the few over-photographed canals and churches one generally sees.

But the people who did the U.S. version DVD are incompetents, unfortunately. This is only the second DVD that I have watched where the brightness/contrast were so badly mangled in making the transfer that the film is unwatchable until one moves his controls way off their ISF-calibrated positions. To be precise, it is the second-worst. The worst has been the total butchering of Antonioni's "La Notte", where even moving the controls to their limit cannot produce a decent picture.