Review for Cheeky (Dual Format)

After watching the sub-par porn of Frivolous Lola colour me unsurprised when Tinto Brass's Cheeky is just more of the same. Only even more pointless than before. Now I understand that Brass has a cult following, much in the same way as Russ Meyer did with his 60s/70s films, but this is a guy who really should have just cut his losses and started doing porn. I mean he is really good at showing the female body in all its glory and lingering over it. What he's not good at is writing, editing or directing a coherent or enjoyable story. Maybe if all he had to worry about was filming the sex he might have been onto something.

Carla is in London looking for a flat for her boyfriend Matteo when she finds the one estate agent who just happens to speak fluent Italian. Within seconds, Moira is seducing Carla and requesting she come see the flat she has in mind. From there they embark on a lesbian affair of sorts, while Matteo discovers that Carla has been less than faithful before too which makes him very angry.

What follows is what you would expect from a Tinto Brass film. So much so that while watching I almost started to go through the Tinto Brass Checklist:

Woman not wearing panties? Check.
Couples randomly having sex outside.... in London no less? Check.
Straight girl willing to try lesbianism? Check.
Lingering closeups of the entire female body? Check.
Masturbation scene? Check.
Sex scene every ten minutes? Check.
Urination scene? Check.
Perverted cameo of Tinto Brass? Check.
And finally sex scene that goes on far too long to the point where you wish they would get on with the plot? Check.

This film has everything you would expect from him and more with the added lesbianism and bizarre orgy that makes what he didn't film for
Caligula look tame.

What is more crazy about all this is that at the one hour mark I'm thinking 'Did I miss the plot here? I mean is something actually going to happen apart from just nudity!?' Yes, once again Brass made nudity boring. Even more than that is when you discover that it took five people to write a film that essentially has no plot? What were they all doing?

This film was simply insufferable. Looking back I think I was too harsh on Frivolous Lola, for at least it looked like that film was trying and it looked nice in regards to the cinematography. This film looked like a sleazy porn film. Nothing more. If you had told me Jackie Treehorn had made this I would have believed you. The amount of nudity and sex was so excessive that I am still shocked that this isn't an R18, but even more so with the immense amounts of male and female sex throughout.

The acting by everyone was awful and any time they tried to make a scene seem dramatic it segued into another sex scene. It is really difficult to describe the utter pointlessness of the film and at times I found myself bored by everything and at a little under ninety minutes that is bad.

A short featurette is included in which Tinto Brass tries his best to explain what the film is about and what he was trying to achieve. By all accounts it is about betrayal, which I get, but it is told in such a way that you wouldn't get that or indeed see what the consequences were. As with Frivolous Lola it really did need some independent opinions to explain what the film was supposed to be, but again maybe they couldn't find anyone. A trailer is also included which more of less tells you that the film will feature nudity and lesbianism, so at least they got that part right.

Cheeky is not a film I enjoyed watching. Though the sexual scenes would have worked as part of a porn film in this narrative of betrayal, awful comedy and not much else they just seemed out of place and a little pointless. This film was not cheeky at all, instead it was simply boring.