Seek out the 2019 Blu-ray release from Cult Epics for a proper restoration. But keep that old DVDRip on your hard drive—as a relic of a different internet.
Monamour is not Tinto Brass’s best film ( Caligula and The Key still hold those crowns), but it is his most tender. It is a film about the liberation of boredom, shot through a soft-focus lens of sincere desire. And for nearly a decade, the humble DVDRip ensured that Brass’s final great work never faded into obscurity. It was blocky, pirated, and glorious—much like the libido itself.
The film’s engine kicks into gear when she meets the enigmatic, bohemian artist Leon (Max Parodi) during a business trip to Mantua. What follows is not a typical affair narrative. Instead, Brass uses the affair as a Trojan horse to explore Marta’s sexual reclamation. The title—a portmanteau of "My Love" (Mon amour) and "My Woman" (Monamour in Brass’s invented Italian)—hints at the duality: the lover she takes and the self she rediscovers. Tinto Brass’s camera is famously a hedonist. In Monamour , he elevates the female posterior to a cinematic motif. Marta’s body is shot as landscape—curves become hills, the small of her back a valley. Unlike the aggressive, male-dominated gaze of mainstream pornography, Brass’s lens is playful, almost worshipful. He lingers not to humiliate, but to celebrate.
Seek out the 2019 Blu-ray release from Cult Epics for a proper restoration. But keep that old DVDRip on your hard drive—as a relic of a different internet.
Monamour is not Tinto Brass’s best film ( Caligula and The Key still hold those crowns), but it is his most tender. It is a film about the liberation of boredom, shot through a soft-focus lens of sincere desire. And for nearly a decade, the humble DVDRip ensured that Brass’s final great work never faded into obscurity. It was blocky, pirated, and glorious—much like the libido itself.
The film’s engine kicks into gear when she meets the enigmatic, bohemian artist Leon (Max Parodi) during a business trip to Mantua. What follows is not a typical affair narrative. Instead, Brass uses the affair as a Trojan horse to explore Marta’s sexual reclamation. The title—a portmanteau of "My Love" (Mon amour) and "My Woman" (Monamour in Brass’s invented Italian)—hints at the duality: the lover she takes and the self she rediscovers. Tinto Brass’s camera is famously a hedonist. In Monamour , he elevates the female posterior to a cinematic motif. Marta’s body is shot as landscape—curves become hills, the small of her back a valley. Unlike the aggressive, male-dominated gaze of mainstream pornography, Brass’s lens is playful, almost worshipful. He lingers not to humiliate, but to celebrate.