Released by: Quality X
Released on: August 31st, 2024.
Director: Kamal Horulu
Cast: Laurien Dominique, Vanessa Del Rio, Robert Kerman, Paul Thomas
Year: 1980
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Woman In Love– Movie Review:
Kamal Horulu’s Woman In Love (of, if you prefer, Woman In Love: A Story Of Madame Bovary) tells the tale of a woman named Christine Warren (Laurien Dominique). She lives in a fancy New York City apartment with her husband, Alex (Robert Kerman) and yearns for the days when her husband was more interested in her than he currently is in his work. Alex reminds her that his job has given her everything she’s ever wanted in life, but Christine needs love and affection to go along with the fancy clothes.
Before Alex takes off on his latest work trip, he gets Christine and interview with Simone Foster (Vanessa Del Rio), the wife of his employer. Simone runs a high-end fashion boutique and after meeting Christine, figures she’ll be perfect for the job. Simone also introduces Christine to Georgio De Stefano (Paul Thomas, credited as Phil Tobus), a wealthy playboy type with whom Simone has been fooling around. In fact, it seems Simone fools around with a lot of people, be it customer Amy (Christie Ford) or helper Maurice (Ron Hudd) – anyone who is nearby and willing!
With Alex in and out of New York for work, Christine gets invited to a party at Georgio’s place where an orgy breaks out. Not comfortable in this setting, she winds up heading out with a starving artist type named Eric Crandell (Ron Jeremy) and soon enough, starts to develop feelings for him. As Christine starts to fall in love with Eric and enjoy her newfound sexual freedom with Simone and her friends, she decides she’s going to do what needs to be done and file for divorce with Alex.
But of course, it’s going to wind up being a little more complicated than that…
Very well-acted by the main leads and featuring a great supporting cast made up of Veronica Hart, Eric Edwards, Samantha Fox, Bobby Astyr, Jerry Butler, Jake Teague, Veri Knotty and even a water-sports loving George Payne, Woman In Love is an intelligent and engaging drama that mixes hardcore sex into its plot pretty effectively. There’s a decent story being told here, even if the ‘frustrated housewife’ trope has been done to death in movies pornographic or otherwise. The leads all do a good enough job with their performances that the characters are interesting to us (though casting Paul Thomas as an Italian is a bit of a stretch) and while it won’t take a rocket scientist to see film’s finale coming, it still feels like an appropriate end to the story being told.
The cinematography from the prolific Larry Revene is top-notch, using plenty of interesting and unique camera angles and lighting techniques to capture the drama inherent in the story as well as the ever important details of the sex scenes. There’s an artistry on display here on Revene’s part, and this is a very nicely lensed film. Kamal Horulu’s direction and editing is also quite solid, keeping the story moving and managing to not bring the plot to a grinding halt anyone takes their clothes off and gets down to it. Overall, this works really well.
Woman In Love– Blu-ray Review:
Woman In Love arrives on Blu-ray from Quality X in an AVC encoded 1080p high definition transfer framed at 1.85.1 widescreen on a region free 25GB disc “newly scanned & restored in 4K from the original 35mm negative” and it looks really good. Natural film grain is but there’s really no print damage to note. Skin tones look nice and natural and black levels are very strong, with color reproduction typically pretty impressive. Detail levels are generally very strong and the image is free of any noise reduction, edge enhancement or compression issues. This looks excellent.
The only audio option on the disc is a 24-bit DTS-HD 2.0 Mono track in English with optional subtitles provided in English only. There are some bits that sound just a tad flat but overall, the audio quality here is just fine. The track is properly balanced and despite some fairly regular sibilance, things generally sound just fine. The score and music used in the movie also sounds pretty solid and demonstrates some nice depth.
There are no extras on the disc at all, but this release comes packaged with some reversible cover sleeve art, and, if ordered from the Melusine website, a limited edition slipcover.
Woman In Love- The Final Word:
Woman In Love is a well-made XXX drama with some solid performances and memorable set pieces. The Blu-ray release from Quality X could have used some extra features but the presentation for the movie itself is quite good. Recommended for fans of vintage adult films.
Click on the images below, or right click and open in a new window, for full sized Woman In Love Blu-ray screen caps!