Ms Kathleen's

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I was originally hesitant, especially when I read that “La Matriarca” was classified as a European sex comedy. My experience has been that European sex comedies, especially those from the 60’s and 70’s, are neither funny nor sexy. In fact, they are just silly. Now I like silly, and I've always been a fan of English humor. I love Monty Python silly. However, I've never been much for Italian, French, Spanish, or German silly. I've seen some great films that have come out of Italy, France, Spain and Germany, but unless it's slapstick, comedy can get lost in translation when it relies on clever dialogue. Comedy can suffer from a cultural divide. Nevertheless, my interest in this film was the sex, not the comedy.

In doing my initial research, I quickly discovered that “La Matriarca” was available in English, complete with English dialogue, under the name “The Libertine”. ‘Good’, I thought, ‘I don’t have to read subtitles’. Not that I mind reading subtitles if the movie is first-rate, but if it is a bad film, the subtitles make the movie watching experience all the more tedious.

The short synopsis of “The Libertine” went like this: