Criminal Cinema-Movie Review

Life-Size (aka Love Doll)

Dir. Luis Garcia Berlanga
1974, 101 MIN

French icon Michel Piccoli (Themroc, La Grande Bouffe, Danger: Diabolik) stars in this perverse love story about a man who dumps his wife for an incredibly realistic-looking sex doll.

His wife (the gorgeous Rada Rassimov) has tired of the games required for his sexual arousal (one such game involves a pig costume) and his emotional distance is enabled further by the arrival of the love doll to which he will eventually pledge his undying love.

That is, until he begins to suspect that the doll has been cheating on him! Piccoli carries the film effortlessly, and plays the role completely straight -- which makes the steamy sex scenes all the more hilarious and absurd.

Because this film has never been released in North America in any format, the version I saw was a Spanish-region DVD with a LIVE TRANSLATION by Edwin Neal -- an actor who has dubbed hundreds of anime titles for the English market, but is known primarily as the hitch-hiker from the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

As much as Ed's French accent was up to par, he was hamming it up beyond belief, which made me wish I could just hear Piccoli's voice. It was a surreal experience to say the least, and the blow-up doll handed out as a door prize ironically went to Ed Neal's daughter, who was in the audience.

Kier-La Janisse

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