A collection of video-montages that purport to explore the foreigner’s sensualised fantasy of Parisian imagery, soft-core maestro Louis de Mirabert does little more than provide a tiresome parade of clichéd European eroto-twaddle in his first live-action HD foray.
So lacking in behind-camera experience that he fails to register on the IMDb website, de Mirabert enjoys a following amongst the pretentious glitterati of continental B-celebrities thanks to his sexualised photo-essays and graphic new-media art instalments.
With Les Plus Belles Etranges de Paris (The Most Beautiful Foreign Women In Paris, but appallingly, it has been renamed Paris Exotic Beauties for we Antipodean hicks), he seems admirably determined to bring to life a whole world of naked women through the lens of a famed French photographer, as if all the women of the world need to be truly beautiful is the touch of a French artiste.
Introduced by title cards that herald his subordinate specimens as 'Japanese Orchid’, 'Austrian Princess’, 'Sweet Inuit’, the worryingly-titled 'Oriental Shower’ and, quite jaw-droppingly, 'Australian Surfer’ (though it is quite obvious that the young lady featured has never held a surfboard in her life), de Mirabert embraces all the most obvious teen-dream imagery he can muster to paint the city of Paris as the erotic capital of the known world. He shamelessly employs slow-motion, black-&-white footage, food and limousine fantasies, exhibitionistic urges and, during the episode entitled 'Queen of Sheba’, bathing in goats milk, to exploit his cavalcade of Vaseline-focussed nubiles.
Seemingly by accident, de Mirabert does stumble upon insight on one occasion. In the monochrome episode entitled 'Caribbean Fetish’, a young model must endure a 'Catwoman’-like costume and pose in S&M-inspired positions that obviously cause discomfort. De Mirabert’s camera absorbs her anguish and displeasure, though she gamely responds to the director’s off-camera urgings. The spectacle captures precisely the ageless debauchery of the pornographer’s work – the distortion of beauty, the abuse of the unwilling, the degradation of the innocent. De Mirabert would call his work modern art; the model in 'Caribbean Fetish’ may disagree.
Acquired by Universal Home Entertainment via the company’s distribution arrangement with French media industry giant Studio Canal+, Les Plus Belles Etranges de Paris is a rare blight on the company’s fine catalogue. Louis de Mirabert’s film demands to be taken seriously, yet even fails at what it should have achieved so effortlessly – mild titillation. If Hugh Hefner ever steals the Miss Universe pageant away from Donald Trump, the broadcast will look like Les Plus Belles Etranges de Paris – a sad spectacle made even sadder.
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