Sensuela (1973)

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Sensuela (1973)

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Sensuela (1973)

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In the early 60s the famous finnish director Teuvo Tulio decided that the time was right to jump the sexploitation-wagon. He had had big succes all the way from the silentfilm time with gloomy romantic melodrams in countryside settings, but times were getting harder. He decided to spice up one of his earlier stories with some nudity. But this project was going slow due to lack of money, he started filming in the mid 60s but not before 1972 was the film completed. The Finnish censors where harsh, about 5 minutes of brothelscenes was proptly cut off. It was filmed in English for a internationall release, that never happened, a Finnish dubbed version was screened in Kemi and two other smaller finnish towns, and a total of 650 persons went to see it, a grand fiasco. But an exceptional success as exploitationtrash it is!

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Sensuela (1973)

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The film starts in Lappland where a nazipilot crashes and is saved by a family of lapps, he falls in love with the daughter, the beautiful Laila. But her father is a hard man, he bites off reindeer testicles with his teeth and shows the pilot the way to the border. After the end of the war, the guy comes back up north, now as a photographer, he meets Laila again and they run off to the capital Helsinki for a time of love and nudeposing. As expected, everything goes wrong and after a lot of intrigues and hard times Laila founds herself in the rough red light distric of Hamburg.

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Sensuela (1973)

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It shows that the film is made on and off over a long period, some scenes are very well made and good, and others are complete turkey. There´s a lot of madness going on, wild parties, a lot of nudity and some violence and also stuffed animals and miniatyres. When the lappfather cames to town, with a vengeance, he bits of the nuts of the photographer, just as he did with the deers, shocking! In the middle of the film there´s a great sequens of about 15 minutes. Laila has just met a new boyfriend, they´re out on a small island, spends a long time in the sauna, then some nude bathing, then it cuts up to Lappland, where the father sees a nude photo of his daughter on the wall of the local shop, sinks a bottle of vodka and shouts "perkele", it doesn´t get more Finnish than that!

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Sensuela (1973)

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This one isn´t only recommended, it´s a total must for the exploitation-fan, an allround great film! The scenes in Hamburg that the censors cut could have been in any sleaze italian thrashflick. Also the fact that a wellknow melodram director makes wild trash like this adds to the appeal!

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… Sensuela easily trumps even the most entertainingly over-the-top melodramas of Raffaelo Matarrazzo. A closer analogy might be the Nicholas Ray of Johnny Guitar, where his weird directorial touches attempted to reclaim the western for feminists. While obviously suffering from a low budget, Tulio's ambition leads to part-time greatness here. A sauna scene with ample nudity that goes on far longer than necessary leads to a great moment where we and Aslak both realize the whole thing was staged with hidden cameras. Being made for adults-only theatres, the film can go much farther than Italian or Hollywood melodramas were able to go; my jaw was on the floor when the reindeer neutering technique made a return appearance in the plot. I howled with laughter at that one; you just don't expect to see that in a 40-year-old film. From there the film goes on to suggest a happy ending before again pulling the rug out from the audience and going even darker and sleazier.

Cinema Pantheon

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Sensuela (1973)

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Calling this movie the worst in Finnish movie history is a serious misjudgment. Teuvo Tulio's final work was marred by financial troubles, but his story about an innocent Lapland girl turning prostitute is a feast of surreal plot, almost psychedelic colors and over-Brechtian amateur acting. There are some obvious cultural mistakes: for example, in the first scenes Laila, the Lapland girl, is actually wearing men's clothes. These mistakes, however, do not spoil the film as visually it is almost over-stylized.

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Sensuela (1973)

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Sometimes the movie has been called soft porn, but actually it conveys a direct feminist message and works as a critique of objectivation of women. At the same time Laila is shown as an active, not a passive, character. Tulio has also included some intertextual references to his earlier movies, creating a hybrid that constantly walks the line between art, irony and feminist commentary. It's a shame that lack of finances came in the way of Tulio's vision.

IMDB Reviewer

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Sensuela (1973)

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… This movie is so wonderful, so OUT THERE, that I've really had trouble even summarizing it for fear of not doing it justice. Like the best (?) of Ed Wood's work, there's an earnestness and honest enthusiasm that shines through even the most outrageously inept acting, set-ups, and special effects, a joy that is (like Greta's love) infectious. Its bright colors and comic-panel framing seem either an imitation or an echo of Russ Meyer's trademark style, and the aforementioned Jess Franco nightclub scenes and perverse sexuality make for a 3-director trifecta that any Madite should be salivating over. There's plenty of grooviness, loads and loads of nudity, some genuinely hot sex scenes (bonus fact: Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake is the "chicka-chicka-waow-waow" music of Finland), interesting cultural facts, and enough MADNESS to stop a herd of uncastrated reindeer in their tracks. It's a movie that must be seen–maybe in order to be believed, but for whatever reason, it MUST BE SEEN.

Mad Movies

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Sensuela (1973)

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Special Features (in Finnish with optional English/Finnish/Swedish subs):
- About The Movie (29:40)
- Short film: A fight over the Heikkila farm (08:09)
- About Tulio (18:10)
- Conservation of Tulio's film (18:09)