Exponerad or Exposed, Diary Of A Rape, The Depraved.

DVD Cover with the warning advertisement.

This week in the S.P.A.M. Alternative blog we’ll be taking a look at the 1971 Swedish exploitation flick Exponerad AKA Exposed AKA Diary of a Rape AKA The Depraved- with a bevy of title changes you know this one will be something to behold.  Gustav Wiklund, who is better known for his acting in Sweden, directs the film, and Christina Lindberg, the Swedish exploitation goddess, stars.  While the content of the film itself amounts to little more than the nasty sex flicks Lindberg was known for during the time, the presentation of this film was much more artfully done.  Some sources also state that this premiered at the 1971 Cannes Film Festival, however I found no proof backing that up.

In Exponerad, Christina Lindberg plays Lena, a naïve young girl roped into an abusive relationship with a man named Jan, who exploits her in nearly every way he can.  She eventually escapes his grasp and falls for another man, Helge, but Jan finds her and her past life begins to once again resurface.

The interesting thing is that we’re never really sure if Lena is an unwilling participant in Jan’s games or not.   The film frequently jumps to fantasies Lena is having involving being dominated in one way or another.  It seems that she’s constantly torn between her safe relationship with Helge, and the drug-fuelled, orgy-having relationship with Jan.

To complicate things further, the film also jumps forward and back in time.  This non-linear structure confuses Lena’s state of mind even more, leaving it up to the viewer to draw their own conclusions about her feelings.  It’s this element that elevates the film from just another exploitation film to something more contemplative.

Photo shooting sesion.

Lindberg’s performance is the driving force behind Exponerad, with everyone else feeling stiff and slightly odd.  Heinz Hopf’s role as Helge felt particularly weird, with multiple shots focusing in on his face while having this incredibly dumb look on him.  This caused a few bits of unintentional comedy, but not enough to really bring the film down too much.

 

As far as the content in Exponerad, it features everything you might expect from a ‘70s Lindberg movie.  She’s naked nearly the entire film, and there’s sex scene after sex scene, most of which are unnecessary.  Most of these scenes feature consensual sex, so it’s not as disturbing or graphic as something like Thriller, but if orgies and lots of full frontal nudity make you uncomfortable, this may not be for you (who am I kidding? this movie is for  you!)

Jan, a former ABBA member haha.

Without a doubt this film’s main attraction and reason why the story works is the casting of Christina Lindberg in the film’s lead role of Lena. Christina Lindberg is very good in roles like this one which require her to be innocent and sexually curious. Fans of Christina Lindberg will be happy to know that she spends plenty of screen time with little or no clothing at all. Her strongest scenes are with Heinz Hopf who she would work again with three years later, Thriller: A Cruel Picture. Performance wise Heinz Hopf plays a role that is very similar to the one that he would play in the film Thriller: A Cruel Picture. The film’s most memorable scene is a bondage scene where Helge who has just broken into Lena’s apartment retrains her arms and legs as she lays in bed. The weakest performance in the film is an actor named Björn Adelly who portrays Jan, one of the two suitors who are in love with Lena. Ultimately fans of Swedish erotica and Christina Lindberg should thoroughly enjoy Exposed!

Christina Lindberg's Talent.

Synapse Films presents Exposed in an anamorphic widescreen that preserves the film’s original aspect ratio. This transfer has been flagged for progressive playback. Colors are nicely saturated, black levels fare well, details looks sharp throughout and print damage is minimal and never distracting. Overall this is another strong transfer from Synapse Films.

 

This release comes with one audio option a Dolby Digital mono mix in Swedish and removable English subtitles have been included. The audio sounds clear, evenly balanced and there are no major audio defects.

Extras for this release include the film’s original theatrical trailer (1 minute 54 seconds), The U.S. trailer for the film (3 minutes 47 seconds), two songs sung by Christina Lindbergh titled ”Allt blir tyst igen” (Everything Goes Quiet Again) and “Du är min enda vän” (You are my Only Love) and a stills gallery (30 images) that plays like a featurette with music from the film playing in the background. The main extra included with this release is a seventeen minute featurette titled “Over-Exposed” which includes interviews with Christina Lindberg and director Gustav Wiklund (in Swedish with English subtitles). The bulk of comments come from Gustav Wiklund who discusses how Christina was chosen for the role, the real life event that loosely inspired the plot, the score for the film and a missed opportunity to work with Roger Corman. Some topics that Christina Lindberg discusses include working with Heinz Hopf and promoting Exposed at the Cannes film festival. There are also many stills of Christina Lindberg that appear in the featurette. Overall Synapse Films give Exposed a strong DVD release that is highlighted by the two music tracks sung by Christina Lindberg.

Kinky face?

Overall an average movie, I wouldn't consider this piece as a cult movie, since the story is quite simple and not very original. The acting seems to be also lacking on this movie, characters seem to be extremely cold (probably swedish are that way IDK) and again this is another of the 25 films made by Christina Lindberg in which sex, and nude scenes are the reason for which she's a part of it. I'm not saying i don't like her, I do but as an actress she isn't very capable, her body language and speech seem all the same in every movie she's been into, so don't watch two or three Lindberg's movies cause you will evidently see that she seems to be all the time playing the same part with different names and settings but still the same thing.

 

An Exploitation legend, definitely

Yeah! She's dressed some times too!

After watching this film I watched a 2008 interview with Christina Lindberg, in which I noticed how unpleasant she felt about the interview, since it was mostly about her nude & sex scenes, you could tell how she forced herself into saying she didn't really remember much of the exact dates in which she worked on her films and also didn't remember her exact age when filming, only assuming she did make two to three films per year and that most of them took six months of work at most.

Finally she also said how different is sex, nudity and violence toward women in films today, but didn't really give much of an opinion at all, probably  cause she's not very fluent with English or perhaps cause she's not a 61  granny proud of her acting career, but hey, she said she was ok with being nude and still is.

Who knows?

Swedish movie poster.

This original poster suggests the "banned in 36 countries"

By the way this movie is said to have been banned in several countries at the time of its release. The reason? well, plenty of nudity & sex, but it's not hardcore sex, not real at all just erotic scenes and that's it, but probably for those days standards it was a major scandal...

Worth watching? sure, the story is simple but catchy, not a piece of art.

Here's the official movie trailer: