After the success of Emmanuelle and The Story of O, French photographer-turned-filmmaker Just Jaeckin could have kept producing arthouse erotica, like his contemporaries Jess Franco and Radley Metzger. Instead, he chose to make a paranoid thriller in the vein of Alan J. Pakula's Klute—but with considerably more nudity. In the 2020 interview included with this 4K restoration, he admits that he prefers the glamor of classic Hollywood to the grit of the nouvelle vague. For thematic inspiration, he turned to Fernande Grudet, aka Madame Claude (played by Françoise Fabian, My Night at Maud's), subject of Jacques Quoirez's 1975 bestseller. With the exception of Claude and the Lockheed scandal, screenwriter André G. Brunelin invented most of the other incidents and characters, like David Evans (Murray Head of "One Night in Bangkok" fame), a frisky photographer with an eye for her attractive employees and an unfounded suspicion that she's using them to sell state secrets since her client list includes the world's most powerful men, including Robert Webber’s Kennedyesque US President.
In Jaeckin's conception, Evans is the true villain, since he's been for using incriminating photos to blackmail her clients. The CIA, meanwhile, becomes convinced that the two are in cahoots. The set-up allows Jaeckin to blur the lines between voyeurism and surveillance, since most every character is watching or being watched. It also implicates the audience, since we see what Evans sees in mirrors and through viewfinders, including his trysts with call girls Jill and Ann-Marie (models Ylva Setterborg and Vibeke Knudsen). If the studio used sex to market this 1977 film, including a Playboy pictorial shot by Helmut Newton, Jaeckin presents sex as a commodity like any other. Claude, who grew up in a convent, has no problem keeping emotion out of it.
For her, it's all about power as she controls the way her girls look as expertly as she negotiates with Iraqi princes and Greek industrialists, like Klaus Kinski's Alexandre Zakis. To Fabian's credit, she treats this tabloid material no differently than her work for Jacques Rivette or Éric Rohmer. One afternoon at a high-end boutique, Claude notices a young lovely shoplifting a dress. Sensing an opportunity, she pays for it in a bid to get Elizabeth (model Dayle Haddon) to work for her. It doesn't happen right away, but Elizabeth eventually relents, and Claude sets her up with Zakis, who tasks her with deflowering his son, Frederic (Pascal Greggory), and that's the point at which everything collides, leaving two people dead. Even by drawing from fact, Jaeckin creates a world more fantastical than not, though it's also immensely appealing, from Serge Gainsbourg's funk-tinged score to Robert Fraisse's dreamy cinematography to the exquisite makeup and costume design (especially in a baroque orgy sequence). The results are occasionally silly, especially the acrobatic sex scenes, but never less than entertaining. An enthusiastic commentary track from Jeremy Richie, author of a biography of Emmanuelle star Sylvia Kristel, covers every aspect of this fascinating film in great detail. Highly recommended.