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The Margin

40 votes

A businessman leaves his country home, and wife and young son for a business trip to Paris. While there he develops a sexual and spiritual bond with a call girl.

Status: Released

Released Date: 1976-09-22

Runtime: 88 mins

Director: Walerian Borowczyk

Writer: André Pieyre de Mandiargues

Spoken language: Français

Genres: Drama

Original title: The Margin

Production Companies: Robert et Raymond Hakim, Paris-Film Production

Production Countries: France

Cast

Sylvia Kristel

Joe Dallesandro

André Falcon

Mireille Audibert

Denis Manuel

Louise Chevalier

Emmanuel Franval

Dominique Marcas

The stripper

Norma Picadilly

Camille Larivière

Luz Laurent

Karin Albin

Carlo Nell

Dominique Erlanger

Reviews

Geronimo1967

The successful “Sigismond” (Joe Dallessandro) has a sexually active relationship with his wife “Sergine” (Mireille Audibert) and dotes on his young son, but when he takes a business trip to Paris he receives a letter and is soon indulging lavishly on call-girl “Diana” (Sylvia Kristel) with whom he becomes more and more obsessed. Her procurer isn’t best pleased at this emerging arrangement and takes some fairly violent steps to dissuade his future ardours, but will that deter him? Essentially, this is a collection of soft porn scenarios where the camera lingers quite pruriently as the women undress and they have sex. Maybe it was novel for French cinema in 1976 to see nudity sexualised like his, but after about ten minutes of this story-less frolicking I was really quite bored. To be fair to “Sigismond”, there are clues to the rationale for his behaviour dotted about the latter parts of the film, and there’s quite a twist at the conclusion, but there’s no real effort to characterise either him nor “Diana” either in spirit or by using dialogue, and as it progressed it reminded me of those saucy postcards you’d buy at the seaside at the turn of the last century flipped together, or watched through a kaleidoscope. Frankly, this is really quite repetitious and dull. It’s not seedy or seamy, it’s not racy or sexy. Just dull.

2025-12-07

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