9 Lives of a Wet Pussy (1976)

 

Director: Abel Ferrara

Screenplay: Nicholas George

Cast: Pauline LaMonde as Pauline; Dominique Santos as Gyspy; Joy Silver as Nacala

Canon Fodder

 

Yes, that title is an eyebrow raiser. Just as this hardcore film starts, there is real oral sex with a man and a woman set to pure seventies porn groove music. And this is how Abel Ferrara, the legendary and controversial director of films like Bad Lieutenant (1992), actually began his career rather than with The Driller Killer (1979). Until the work of Vinegar Syndrome, an American restoration and distribution company who alongside genre films also have persevered the Golden Age of hardcore pornography, 9 Lives... was one of the more difficult films to see in Ferrara's career, a title now for a period of films in the 2000s (Mary (2005)) caught in rights issues. This is not an absurd film to have in his career mind, as even his "respectable" films have dealt with desire and the human, body and soul, in condition, so a pornographic film about desire makes pure sense in context especially with the earlier films in his career, written by Nicholas George, were mostly genre films which had an edge to them even in purely their moods. The problem up front with 9 Lives of a Wet Pussy comes from the compromise, along one problematic sequence, that undercut this one of being a film sold as pornography, that this era allowed these film to be interesting and creative, but that they could have easily been films prioritising the sex than adding interesting touches to it.

9 Lives... at seventy one minutes with these extended scenes of sex struggles to flesh out enough of the "what-if" with its ideas. The little fragment is fascinating and, in mind to Ferrara's films having themes of Catholicism for a key period of time, it is as much because this is also a mystical New Age occult film as well. Gypsy (Dominique Santos) is receiving letters from a former lover named Paulette (Pauline LaMonde), a free spirits whose recounting in them of all her sexual partners is the only solace for Gypsy beyond opium fantasies of this former love. Eventually, in the little plot we get, as Gypsy narrates and explains to the viewer from her sanctum home, we learn she has supernatural powers and intends to find a way to return Paulette to her. It is a compelling idea for a film, softcore or hardcore, ennui to be found here as Paulette casually wanders through relationships, be it the perfect male sex machine who is cold elsewhere, to an attended at a gas station bathroom whilst with the former, to a Nigerian princess.

It is structured around the sex scenes, but the idea of a figure who is purely of desires, and the other woman who still thinks of her, plotting as her guardian witch, is a fascinating idea especially from Abel Ferrara, whose films evoke a certain aesthetic even with his later work, suggesting tantalising ideas of how he would deal with this subject matter. Bluntly, the film is not profound and struggles for its slightness. It could have worked, especially as this is still a time of porn cinema where, unlike the emphasis on scenes in the modern PornHub era and some films, there was an emphasis on theatrical films which had surprising amount of production design to them nonetheless. The soundtrack alone is strong too, even if one song does suggest it is going to turn into a Status Quo track, tonally inappropriate in terms of this review, and the most British reference to bring in, but impossible for me to ignore. In terms of its subject, the concept of the film as a series of erotic segments including reinterpreting a Biblical tale from the Old Testament offers a lot that is not out of place for Ferrara to tackle.

And moments do show that something very interesting was here. Even the un- Ferrara choice of jazz fusion does not undercut one scene when the film is focused, Gypsy's sexual desires for Pauline depicting envisioning the later in a space entirely nude in a blinding white light as a reality. Even a scene which would be understandably seen as unacceptable now suggests what this film could have been, which is the reinterpretation of the Old Testament, that of Lot's daughters, which is retold with Paulette's grandmother, whose she shared her face and soul with, and her sister with their father. Containing Ferrara in an onscreen role, through with a stung body double and clearly not a Swedish old man just from his accent, the segment will be uncomfortable because it is non-consensual sex and incest, but is fascinating in literalising a real Bible passage which is contentious in itself, that it is Lot's daughters getting their older father drunk and conceiving children with him, the later never explicitly talked about in this version. Due to how the film feels threadbare in content, there is no ability to make this type of scene have any meaning, with one of the more transgressive aspects being that the film has real sex for all the scene including this one, even if the film is of actors choreographing scenes which just invoke real sexual contact at the end of the day. At least with that scene, shot lacksidasical which undercuts the discomfort, the idea it is tackling dealing with Paulette's heritage, and tapping into taboo sexuality which is found even in the Bible and is a tale of rape even in that context, makes it something that, in another film, would have still been a challenging and problematic work but still to consider with pause for thought.

Not defendable in the slightest, uncomfortable and even padded out, is the rape scene of the Nigerian princess which exists only for the disquieting idea of being erotic, something which back than would have been an easy red target for an anti-porn feminist like Andrea Dworkin to show if she had been aware of this. It is part of the uncomfortable schism in seventies erotica of trying to be serious, even with this type of controversial content, but clearly made with titillation, a schism where you get films which, even if uncomfortable, were intentionally aiming for something truly challenging, and then films like this where the scene here is lacksidasical in depiction, last a while and most would not even be interesting in debating, quick to dismiss it. Baise-Moi (2001), a controversial film from two female directors, was a rape-revenge film where the sex, consensual and not, was depicted with the actors actually have real sexual contact, which can be debated in terms of whether it was justifiable for that film, but was part of a film that was meant to shock and make people uncomfortable for a reason. With 9 Lives..., I cannot really defend the film at all for this scene, because its purpose, especially as there is not a lot to the film around it in actual material that can undercut and/or change how one is meant to interpret it, especially as the character barring some relationship with Paulette leaves the film soon after never to be seen again.

Moments like this undercut the fascination 9 Lives of a Wet Pussy can have, as even his scuzzier work from later one had deeper thoughts, or were a film like Fear City (1984), which was so brazenly ridiculous (and sincere) you had to admire it. This film instead suffers from having to tick boxes for being a porn film, which alongside the moral concerns with some of the content, also reveals how much of this is really a first attempt at making a film that found it not fully becoming its creators' own take on the genre. Even The Driller Killer for all its luridness as a Video Nasty fits Abel Ferrara as an auteur in his obsessions like a glove.  A slither of interest in here, the mysticism, becomes the most enticing idea of the film, ending with Gypsy turning into a man to have sex with Paulette, in the middle of a twilight reality with a protracted shot of the moon like the pinpoint camera hole in a black screen. This idea, even if the film had been longer and had more sex scenes, offers at least the idea of something very unconventional yet befitting the type of films its creator would go on to do.

This instead is still however porn in the dismissible way for large parts of it, not one of the creative ones which managed to possess something special, or just suit the point of the genre of titillation in a way which was actually admirable in a pro-sex good way. An older Ferrara film would have tackled this subject, even in softcore, with something truly compelling, and it is with praise knowing his next film, The Driller Killer, fully cemented his trajectory fully. This feels like the first attempt, and if it had been without the rape scene, and had more time to flesh itself out, literally in content and in its ideas, I would look to 9 Lives of a Wet Pussy with more than curiosity. Even the title feels absolutely inappropriate for an Abel Ferrara directed porn film, the clumsy first film which has its intrigue undercut by the context of what the film turned out to be.