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Released by: Alpha France
Released on: March 2015.
Director: Patrick Aubin
Cast: France Lomay, Karine Gambier, Yvan Renaud, Orson Rosebud
Year: 1980
Purchase From TLA Video
The Movie:
Directed by Jean-Claude Roy under his Patrick Aubin pseudonym, Initiation A L'Echangisme (a.k.a. Swapping Couples) is probably better known to North American audiences as Shared With Strangers, the title that it was released under by VCX years back.
The story is a fairly simple one, beginning with a scene in which a man named John (Yvan Renaud) is engaged in some sexy shenanigans with his sexy lingerie clad wife of one year, Anne (France Lomay). After they get it on for a good long while, he realizes that it's time to get ready for work and off he goes to sell some encyclopedias.
As luck would have it, his first stop introduces him to a sexy, slinky blonde woman named Sylvia (Dominique Saint Claire) who invites him inside. Initially he's trepidatious as he can tell that something is up - and it is. She leads him into the bedroom where her husband, Paul (Dominique Aveline), is waiting. They fuck and want him to watch and though he protests at first, soon enough he's fapping away and gawking at them. After they finish, he can't help but admit that he was into it and they invite him out with them the next night to a swinger's club called The Medallion. He agrees to this and before you know it he's getting it on with Julie (Karine Gambier) while Paul and Sylvia fool around with a few of the other club goers.
Eventually Paul encourages John to bring Ann into the mix, and as he becomes more involved with the swinging lifestyle, he can't help but think that this is a dandy idea indeed. When he finally musters up the courage to introduce his wife to his new friends he finds that her initially hesitation will soon give way to absolute horniness!
Plot wise this is pretty predictable stuff but it's well shot and at sixty-four minutes in length it goes at a very quick pace. The sex is hot and heavy and quite well choreographed and each and every one of the ladies featured in the film is a natural beauty, the lovely and talented Ms. Gambier delivering some stand out work here. France Lomay is pretty smoking too, particularly when she's all dolled up in that opening scene. Yvan Renaud makes for a fairly goofy looking leading man as he's sporting a fairly ridiculous Monkees style mop top but he holds his own when he needs to. The omnipresent Dominique Aveline, his trademark earring one display, also does decent work here too.
This one doesn't reinvent the wheel but it's a solid slice of sexy French smut. The production values are slick and the score works well. The camera work is strong and yeah, if the director doesn't go for originality here the movie does what it does well enough. Throw in some unexpected crossdressing and weird raincoat fetish stuff and this turns out to be a bit weirder than it might at first seem.
Video/Audio/Extras:
Swapping Couples arrives on MOD/DVD-R in 1.66.1 non-anamorphic widescreen, which would appear to be the movie's original aspect ratio. The image is stable enough and black levels are pretty solid here. Colors look okay even if they do occasionally look shift a bit. There is a bit of visible print damage here and there and there are some minor compression artifacts throughout the presentation as well. This is a decent enough transfer despite its non-anamorphic status.
The disc includes an English language Dolby Digital Mono track but no alternate language or subtitle options. The dialogue is generally pretty clear and the track is free of any hiss or distortion. Levels are well balanced, no problems here.
No extras on the disc at all.
The Final Word:
Swapping Couples is both sexy and entertaining and if it is quite obviously on the shorter side of feature length, it makes up for that by showcasing a strong cast in some enjoyable precocious situations.
