Walerian Borowczyk
Il margine

Are you perhaps in the midst of an existential spleen? Nothing is going right? Among the various methods to remedy such a condition, watching an erotic film (and not just a tedious porn or a bad Tinto Brass movie) could uplift your mood full of sex and lust. Just the other day, while browsing the titles on the Netflix platform, I stumbled upon the erotic section and found "The Margin" by the Polish director Walerian Borowczyk (an author attentive to the theme of eroticism and known for his work "The Beast"). It reminded me of when I saw it in theaters way back in 1977, a time when sexual development also included watching such daring films, banned for those under 18 and not without cuts (which I’ll mention later) designed to defuse the erotic potential of the work (even though, like many others, I remained aroused before, during, and after watching the film). Definitely different times...

"The Margin" is based on the novel of the same name by André Pieyre de Mandiargues and centers on a rather banal story. The protagonist is Sigimond Pons, happily married to a sexy-enough wife and the father of a very cute child. One day, for work reasons, he leaves his countryside residence to go to Paris. Here, in the tentacular and tempting City of Light, he spends his after-work hours frequenting the areas of metropolitan vice to end up in a bistro with rooms set up for the exercise of mercenary sex. Among the professionals of such art is a certain Diana, endowed with an icy yet appropriately fiery beauty, who sparks the interest of the young man, not exactly so faithful to his spouse. But we know the flesh is weak, so away with moral brakes and inhibitions, and on with the frantic up and down for a fee.

However, it so happens that the unexpected is around the corner and Sigimond receives a letter informing him of a tragedy: his son has slipped and drowned in the pool of their country residence, while his wife, mad with grief, has committed suicide. Sigimond, faced with such news, reacts by immersing himself in a totalizing sexual relationship with the prostitute, as if there were no tomorrow, to the point that the woman herself becomes worried about such a cupio dissolvi and leaves him high and dry (despite having received a wad of money from such a desperate and horny client). With such a crescendo of tension, a most tragic ending must indeed be noted.

Rewatching the film after so much time, it struck me as a cold stylistic test of glossy eros, although at the time, I might have liked it due to a considerable youthful libido that needed honing to later explode at the right moment. Aside from the insubstantial acting of Joe Dallesandro as Sigimond (sometimes nonexistent due to his being, at that time "the fastest stallion in the West") and Sylvia Kristel (already famous for the film "Emmanuelle") as the prostitute Diana, the film’s limitation lies in the cuts made due to censorship. We're talking about something like 20 minutes of scissor cuts and anyway, the Italian version is said to miss 6 minutes. Essentially, efforts were made to ensure that the encounters between Sigimond and Diana were not too explicit, although scandalous passages like the blowjob performed by the prostitute on Sigimond to the notes of "Shine on you crazy diamond" were left, as well as a creative use of a raw egg during their intercourse (guess where it gets introduced to the consenting Diana...). Damn censorship that inhibits certain visions for an adult paying audience.

Moreover, even if it's not Borowczyk's best film, "The Margin" confronts us with the underground connections between Eros and Thanatos, akin to what has already been seen in an erotic classic like "In the Realm of the Senses." The protagonist is a desperate man, adrift, searching for an outlet which may consist of extreme sex. And precisely because of all this, I previously mentioned the existential spleen that each of us might encounter sooner or later. The important thing, however, is to brake at the right moment to avoid the tragic end of someone like Sigimond. In short: yes to love, but dying for love isn't quite the case because life can also present us with further pleasant surprises if we know how to seize them.