Change pas de main, Uncensored (1975)

78% (27 / 8)

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Description: A well-known politician woman receives a tape showing her son in a porno movie. She decides to hire a female detective to figure out who is trying to blackmail her. This is a sort of thriller movie taking place in the 50s. Myriam Mézière and Nanette Corey are two detectives. The character, played by Nanette Corey, dies.
Review:
Paul Vecchiali's work is an acquired taste, as he is a filmmaker who marches to the beat of his own drum, never fashionable or popular. Produced by a famous pornographer of the day (Jean-Francois Davy of "Exhibition" fame) it's a rare mainstream (sort of) movie that carefully integrates explicit hardcore sex content into a strong story.

Like other of his films, notably "Femme Femme," Vecchiali seems most influenced by the Nouvelle Vague by Jacques Rivette, with his strong heroines and challenging mix of camp with seriousness. Here we have Myriam Mezieres, an uninhibited performer who takes Paul's challenge to do strong soft-core sex scenes to heart, as a trench-coated hard-boiled detective, with most of the many prominent roles going to similarly tough women. Her case is to investigate what's going on with Helene Surgere's adult son, who we see at the film's opening starring in a hardcore black & white stag movie that leaves nothing to the imagination.

With plenty of shoot-outs and mock violence, Vecchiali creates a strange, campy world for her to move in, revolving around a nightclub where drag queens perform on stage alongside cis-females, wigs are on everybody, and cast members sometimes burst into song or dance without provocation. There are several orgies integrated into the convoluted plot, both staged both softcore and hardcore and ultimately when the story is resolved and a scandal blasted across the front page of the newspapers, we see Myriam walking away with the imagery of a serious film as the conclusion.

Along the way the camp approach comes on so strong that this movie has "cult classic" written all over it, even if that did not come to pass. The direct-sound dialog has bite, the acting top-notch and the unpredictability of situations delightful for the jaded movie buff. However, a more general "art house" target audience is likely to have found it all too precious and indigestible.

Vecchiali's one movie that broke through onto the U.S. art house circuit was "Drugstore Romance" in 1983, featuring several of the "Change pas" leading ladies, and evidence of his career obscurity is the lack of a single review of that movie.

For the opening title, "Change pas de main" is converted back and forth to "Change pas de main" (tomorrow), giving it a double meaning.
Françoise is very appreciated in the prominent Parisian political circles and has a serious chance of becoming a minister. The only snag is a filthy blackmail with regard to her son, Andrew who once got caught up in shady porn movies as an actor. She decides to ask a private investigator, Melinda, to investigate the case. Melinda recruits her girlfriend Natasha to search, leading them to a dubious Shanghai-Lily nightclub together where they lick one dick for two. Here they are waiting for transvestites, lesbians, prostitutes, and fanciful orgies in masks, encounter a necrophilic deviation and gradually come into direct danger of life. Death and murder, like drugs and vice, are part of an environment in which both women continue to search without any doubt whether they can unravel the threads that someone else is pulling.

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