LOVE RITES

Vain clothing buyer Hugo meets beautiful Myriam on the subway and pursues her, discovering to his delight that she’s a sex worker. The crafty Myriam, of course, has more in mind for their encounter than smug Hugo bargained for.

Walerian Borowczyk’s final film is relatively more sexually restrained than the dizzyingly pink heights of his late 60s and 70s cinema. Had he mellowed with age? Nonetheless, Boro’s adaptation of André Pieyre de Mandiargues’s novel still plunges into contemporary sexual mores with gleeful abandon.