Review: Mädchen des Lasters / Ce corps tant désiré / This desired Body 1959... Belinda Lee does Brigitte Bardot

 I admit to currently have a mini crush on Belinda Lee. Someone I had never thought about before. For the KRIMI ENCYCLOPEDIA I had to watch some of her German films she made after the RANK Organisation dropped her, so when this little known French curiousity came my way, I could not say no. It is  - I admit - more drama than crime. But crime is in it, for sure.

So in real life, Belinda is in trouble in 1959, as she had an affair with a  married Italian nobleman, someone very close to the pope. This man tried to commit suicide for her and she had to leave the country and her current employer, said RANK O. is not happy. She ends up in South Africa but is thrown out as being a troublemaker. 

Now she ends up in southern France, together with Argentinian director Louis Saslavsky who had to flee his country cause of Peron. He did four films in France including the remarkable "She-Wolves/Demoniac". He may not be well-known to European audiences but in South America, he was big, check his Wikipedia-entry "en Catalan", if you want.

Brigitte Bardot had had big success with "And God Created Woman" and so the two set out to do a noir-crime-drama out of this. Filmed on location at the mediterranean coast this is about a small-time criminal, the boss of an oyster farm, a prostitute and her pimp. The pimp gets arrested and the prostitute randomly asks the small-timer for help. He has just been thrown out and wants to return to his home village where he co-owned an oyster farm. He helps Belinda Lee get a job there and of course all the men fall for her. Including the actual boss of the farm. Soon Belinda is besieged by all kinds of men as she tries to extract as much money as possible from all of them. The small-timer, a hopeless romantic with a hand for inventing machines and telling fables, too. Things boil up and get violent - even more so when the pimp gets out of prison and wants his "investment" to be paid off.

I did not know what to expect. Her other French-German noir-krimi, "Der Satan lockt mit Liebe," is excellent, and even the story has basically the same characters: The knight, the Pimp, the rational and the Prostitute. But when "The Satan Lures with Love" played it down right to the bitter end, this one here cannot decide what it wants to be : a romantic love story (romantic guy is actually secretly loved by tomboyish but pretty girl), a crime drama, or a jealousy noir??? A rural worker's ballad????

Lee, of course, is a beauty to watch, much taller than all the French guys and severely looking like Wonder Woman throughout the movie. Her chiseled (not necessarily pretty) face is captured beautifully on camera, as is her body. But then, these are only images. The movie itself just trudges along with too many unnecessary subplots and detours.

Recommended for Belinda Lee lovers only.