Should I attempt to make sense of Jess Franco's 'Paula-Paula'? What is sense? What is 'Paula-Paula?'
I digress. The credits offer this project as a version of 'Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde', which is a similarity successfully obfuscated until the very end. Watching this 'audio/visual experience' is a trip, with LSD-inducing visuals and very occasional dialogues. It isn't as explicit as some other productions from Franco's prolific output, there are no invasive, gynaecological shots, but this could be seen as a celebration of young, beautiful, female physicality. Future 'Alligator Ladies' (who would feature in Franco's final films) Carmen Montes and Paula Davis cavort in a variety of lingering slow-motion set-pieces, often given extra psychedelic (and quite unsettling) prowess by kaleidoscopic split-screen video effects. Davis in particular joyously treats the camera like a post-coital lover, and it is difficult to deny an overpowering erotic charge.
The music is, as ever, seemingly inappropriate. A jazzy/flamenco saturation, it nevertheless succeeds in taking every scene out of itself. And yet the majority of the scenes in question simply feature Montes and Davis making out very slo-o-owly. What accompaniment should they need? The comparatively fast-moving jazz doesn't enhance anything, but perhaps that's the point.
In some Franco films, I've often found some of the elongated sexual content distracts from the mood, rather than enhances it, yet have told myself that such indulgences are probably at the insistence of producers and money-men enforcing titillation on Franco's vision in order to get more bums-on-seats. And yet here, when Franco is surely calling the shots, such intimate scenes ARE the backbone of the film and are more prevalent than ever.
Filmed almost entirely in Franco's home, with just a few grainy location shots, 'Paula-Paula' is probably most notable for featuring Lina Romay's final performance (she died two years after this was released). Little more than a cameo, she is a police inspector or a social-worker questioning a distraught Paula (Montes) about the murder of Paula (Davis) and disappears before the imagery that makes up the rest of the 66 minutes running time kicks in. With an abundance of billowing foil walls providing the sets, the two Paulas are, as you may expect, the unquestioned focus-point.
I digress. The credits offer this project as a version of 'Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde', which is a similarity successfully obfuscated until the very end. Watching this 'audio/visual experience' is a trip, with LSD-inducing visuals and very occasional dialogues. It isn't as explicit as some other productions from Franco's prolific output, there are no invasive, gynaecological shots, but this could be seen as a celebration of young, beautiful, female physicality. Future 'Alligator Ladies' (who would feature in Franco's final films) Carmen Montes and Paula Davis cavort in a variety of lingering slow-motion set-pieces, often given extra psychedelic (and quite unsettling) prowess by kaleidoscopic split-screen video effects. Davis in particular joyously treats the camera like a post-coital lover, and it is difficult to deny an overpowering erotic charge.
The music is, as ever, seemingly inappropriate. A jazzy/flamenco saturation, it nevertheless succeeds in taking every scene out of itself. And yet the majority of the scenes in question simply feature Montes and Davis making out very slo-o-owly. What accompaniment should they need? The comparatively fast-moving jazz doesn't enhance anything, but perhaps that's the point.
In some Franco films, I've often found some of the elongated sexual content distracts from the mood, rather than enhances it, yet have told myself that such indulgences are probably at the insistence of producers and money-men enforcing titillation on Franco's vision in order to get more bums-on-seats. And yet here, when Franco is surely calling the shots, such intimate scenes ARE the backbone of the film and are more prevalent than ever.
Filmed almost entirely in Franco's home, with just a few grainy location shots, 'Paula-Paula' is probably most notable for featuring Lina Romay's final performance (she died two years after this was released). Little more than a cameo, she is a police inspector or a social-worker questioning a distraught Paula (Montes) about the murder of Paula (Davis) and disappears before the imagery that makes up the rest of the 66 minutes running time kicks in. With an abundance of billowing foil walls providing the sets, the two Paulas are, as you may expect, the unquestioned focus-point.
