La Derniére Femme: The Last Woman

The Last Woman is here.

Gérard (26 year-old G.Depardieu in a star-making, César-nominated performance) is the he-man single father of a little baby boy who meets carefree, sensuous Valérie (ravishingly beautiful 21 year-old Ornella Muti). They feel instantly attracted to each other, she moves in with him on the spot, they fall in love, she fancies playing stepmother to the baby, he gets jealous, she wants freedom, he gets enraged, she no longer fancies constant love-making, he gets desperate, they quarrel and fight, and things disintegrate until the totally shocking finale knocks you OUT! (Yeah,  the shortest plot review ever made on this blog)

This film was banned mostly everywhere outside Europe, including the US - and you won't find it in VHS or DVD for sale on Amazon, or for rent in your local store. Fortunately, you can always rely on the internet, which is always an endless source of culture. La Derniére Femme AKA The Last Woman is a film that is well known for its shocking power and sexual frankness (You've been warned momma's boy) In this film, director Marco Ferreri questions issues like "couple", "love", "sex", "relationship", "family", "woman" and especially "man". He tells a love story exclusively from a macho point of view: the male characters (primitive, childish Depardieu, phony Piccoli, stupid Salvatori) are shamelessly misogynous and speak out their minds with no censorship or morals. Actually, Gerard Depardieu's character is one you quickly learn to hate as soon as he starts doing his thing in the early scenes.

Parenting, the 70's edition.

Remember, perversion is in the eye of the beholder.

Gérard eats, drinks, bites, sucks, spits, burps, shouts, fucks, harasses, fights, you name it - his bodily needs rule. And most of all, Gérard wonders what is the purpose of having a penis in women lib's times. The male organ is very much the center of the film, visually as well as metaphorically, representing men's questionable appendix in a world (Europe in the sassy 70s) where family, marriage and male-female roles were being seriously questioned. In Gérard's character's own words, as he holds his son's penis in his hand: "All we are left with is the right to go around sporting one of these. But now they want to take away our pride in having them - we're not even allowed that anymore! So what are we supposed to do with them now?"

Depardieu was soon after to become France's biggest star since Delon/Belmondo. You can really think of no other actor more suitable to portray this childish-gross-larger-than-life he-man than Gérard, with his imposing figure and shameless physicality, total emotional assessment and unbelievable boldness - he's completely naked most of the time, is shown in explicit masturbation and has some 2 or 3 full erections, one of them in close-up, no body double!! (This was way before Viagra, mind you, and before Oshima, Bellocchio, Von Trier, Breillat, Larry Clark etc.) He was very probably the first major Western star to be shown like "that" in a non-porn film. The final scene in which he finally finds a way to "deal" with his manhood is one the most shocking EVER done.

Family love.

Self discovery time.

Ornella Muti's nude beauty is also largely available here in some daring scenes, though her face is perhaps even sexier than her body - the combination of her catlike, dreamy green eyes, full lips, dark long hair, that lovely gap in her front teeth and the naughty girl-woman expression is very much a promise of liberated but life-changing sex.

"La Dernière Femme" belongs to Italian director Marco Ferreri's great films, dealing with some of his favorite themes: destruction of male-female stereotypes, flesh/sex/ physiological urges as symbols of life and mortality, physical disability/decay/deformity/mutilation , all of them treated with highly acid sarcasm, a touch of surrealism, another of depression and a lot of dark humor. Ferreri belongs to a very selected group of rebel, risqué and subversively poetic filmmakers, along with Buñuel, Pasolini, Fassbinder, Portuguese João César Monteiro and very few others(We could add Michael Bay to this list, he's a risqué destroying everything he touches) A one-of-a-kind, he attracted great European stars who worked for him over and over again (Mastroianni, Tognazzi, Noiret, Piccoli, Salvatori, Depardieu, Girardot, Deneuve, Vlady, Schygulla, Muti, Romy Schneider etc etc) because they knew they would be given offbeat, once-in-a-lifetime roles. 

Here, have some pussy.

The astonishing Ornella Muti.

Sadly, chances are you won't probably see a copy of "La Dernière Femme" anywhere, unless you look really hard for it. It contains extremely daring scenes, including Depardieu and Ornella having sex in bed with the baby around; nude Depardieu having his nude infant baby explore (I mean, REALLY explore!) Ornella's nude body; and another in which he proudly grabs his baby's willy and points it right at her bemused face. But don't be mislead: beyond the pleasure of shocking his audience, Ferreri firmly shoots us his uncomfortable questions: what is a modern man to do with/without his penis in (post-)feminist times? What the heck do women WANT from men, after all? If you thought "Sex and the CIty" you're galaxies away from "La Dernière Femme".

If you are a Ferreri fan and liked "La Grande Bouffe", "The Ape Woman", "The Queen Bee" or "Tales of Ordinary Madness"(a review is on its way), you should REALLY try to see this one - I guarantee you will NEVER see anything like it!! Not for the prude, humorless, conventional or romantic. 

Here's the deal: