WRITER OF O
Directed & Written by: Pola Rapaport.
Produced by: Sylvie Cazin.
Director of Photography: Wolfgang Held.
Edited by: Variety Moszynski.
Music by: Hélène Blazy.
Released by: Zeitgeist.
Language: English & French with English subtitles.
Country of Origin: USA/France. 80 min. Not Rated.

In 1954, Story of O, a highly erotic novel about sex and power, was written by the mysterious and unknown Pauline Réage. With its S & M fantasies and highly detailed language, it quickly became a scandalous bestseller and the author’s identity, an endless topic of speculation. Forty years later, British journalist John de St. Jorre reveals the person behind the pseudonym: Dominique Aury, former literary editor for the French publishing house Gallimard.

Intertwining the provocative opinions of various literary figures, reenactments from the book, and especially Aury's own personal memories, director Pola Rapaport produces an intimate and compelling narrative. The interviews include the book's colorful publisher Jean-Jacques Pauvert and Jean Paulhan, a man of letters and Aury's married lover, for whom Story of O was written.

Those interviewed display a substantial ease in front of the camera and provide both intelligent comments about women, relationships and sex, as well as entertaining, almost gossipy behind-the-scene details. One of the writers, for example, describes the novel as liberating for women; it was about female sexuality and female needs. And Pauvert, the controversial publisher of such authors as the Marquis de Sade, jovially remembers the attempts to ban Aury's book.

But what is most interesting about the documentary is the author. Early in the film Aury is shown primly and calmly talking about the fact that she is about 70 or 75. A voice in the background corrects her: 90. She smiles, her eyes light up, and she says, 90? Good for me. She is an intelligent, articulate woman, whose accomplishments go beyond the novel. Besides a writer and editor of importance, she was also an active member of the resistance during the Nazi occupation, where she met Paulhan.

The film captures her vitality, wisdom, and the love she felt for a man she was not always sure loved her back. The dramatized scenes from the novel are well acted (never resorting to cheap pornography) and help convey not only Aury's abilities as a writer, but also the great passion she felt for Paulhan. At the same time, the film touches on her vulnerability and the contradictory elements in her personality. In spite of her own accomplishments, she constantly feared of losing him because she was not young or pretty enough. The reason for the book in the first place, according to her, was to please him. Roxana M. Ramirez
May 4, 2005