Tweet
Cheating Couples
Released by: Alpha France
Released on: January, 2015.
Director: Claude Bernard-Aubert (as Burd Tranbaree)
Cast: Richard Allan, í‰lisabeth Buré, Gabriel Pontello, Serena
Year: 1980
Purchase From TLA Video
The Movie:
When this 1980 Alpha France production directed by Claude Bernard-Aubert (as his nomme de porn Burd Tranbaree)starts off, pretty much immediately after a quick title (no opening credits outside of that), a woman named Genevií¨ve (í‰lisabeth Buré) is setting up for a party. Her husband, Vincent (Richard Allan), comes up behind her and slips it in and then forces her to go down. He finishes up just as the guests arrive, though one attendee can't help but notice the mess on Genevií¨ve's face. No matter, this is a swinger's party!
As things heat up, Vincent suggests that Genevií¨ve pick a man from the group and have at it with him in front of all of the other guests. Though she's been fooling around with one of the female guests up to this point, she's decidedly not cool with her husband's suggestion at all and so she walks off in a huff. Not to be outdone, Vincent then suggests one of the other females in attendance (Serena) accept the challenge, and with her own husband's permission she does.
From here on out, the movie follows a series of sexual vignettes orchestrated by Vincent in order to get Genevií¨ve to loosen up. For whatever reason he's hung up on getting her to agree to the idea he presented to her at the party and if he needs to arrange intimate encounters with another guy - Gerald (Gabriel Pontello, who kinda-sorta looks like Tommy Wiseau in this movie) then so be it. This turns him on anyway, and he'll just take her as he sees fit once she arrives back home, whether she likes it or not! But then there's the neighbor, the unusually effeminate Paul (Dominique Aveline), who has a blackmail scheme on his mind. Will poor Genevií¨ve ever catch a break?
There's not a whole lot to the story here but the performers make this worth watching. Richard Allan plays smug like nobody else in the business, he's just seemingly so completely full of himself and so ridiculously self-entitled in this film that you can't help but get a kick out of him. He literally goes around sticking it to and in his wife whenever he feels like it, showing no qualms whatsoever about whether or not she's even remotely in the mood! On the flip side of this is í‰lisabeth Buré's performance which is actually quite believable both in terms of her dramatic work and her physical work. She shows a reluctance early in the film that makes her character interesting and as the film plays out, the way in which she sheds that characteristic is interesting to watch. She's also pretty much on fire during the various couplings in which she takes part.
Throw in supporting work from the instantly recognizable Dominique Aveline, an actor almost as omnipresent in Alpha France films from this era as Allan was, and a brief but steamy pair of scenes with the lovely and talented Serena and it's easy to see how the casting in this picture would equate to butts in seats at French theaters in 1980. Throw into the mix a distinctly bizarre score that mixes up free jazz and hard rock guitar riffs and the typically lush Alpha France production values and if this one is definitely worth a watch for fans of adult cinema of this vintage.
Video/Audio/Extras:
Cheating Couples arrives on MOD/DVD-R in 1.66.1 non-anamorphic widescreen, which would appear to be the movie's original aspect ratio. The image is stable enough and black levels are pretty solid here. Colors look okay even if they do occasionally look shift a bit. There is a bit of visible print damage here and there and there are some minor compression artifacts throughout the presentation as well. This is a decent enough transfer despite its non-anamorphic status.
The disc includes an English language Dolby Digital Mono track but not alternate language or subtitle options. The dialogue is generally pretty clear and the track is free of any hiss or distortion. The odd score used throughout the movie, which sometimes works in some amusingly out of place guitar shredding, sounds pretty solid here too.
No extras on the disc at all.
The Final Word:
Cheating Couples is solid, smutty adult entertainment from the golden age of dirty movies done with a distinctive French flavor and performed by a solid cast of male and female performers alike. The DVD presentation won't blow you away but it gets the job done. Definitely worth a watch.
