First Desires (1983)

Pretty Good

People are voting emotionally.

Beautiful, moving film.

As Good As It Gets

"Premiers désirs" is a French 90-minute film from 33 years ago. It was the last, probably final, directorial effort by famous photographer David Hamilton and it may be a good thing he focused on other areas as this film has little value in my opinion. It is occasionally visually aesthetic, but that is not much of an achievement taking into account that the entire thing plays on a beautiful island. Actually, it is a tourist destination, which also takes away all the survival aspects that this film could have had if they went for a truly (almost) deserted island. So yeah, there are some hot chicks in here, certainly not all of them, but the story, the soundtrack and most of the acting were fairly embarrassing. I am not sure if you have heard of the French television show "Sous le soleil". Imagine a very poor man's version of this one without the stunning Benedicte Delmas, but with weaker actors, script and more breasts in exchange.Also, the language is listed as German on the title page here. This is very much incorrect. All the dialogs are in French, so make sure you get subtitles unless you are fluent in the language. The cast includes a couple semi-famous names such as Patrick Bauchau or the very young Emmanuelle Béart, but there are also actors in here playing major characters that have never or almost never acted before or after this film and it painfully shows in terms of their range and line delivery. The most ridiculous moment was probably when they included a plane crash really only for dramatic purpose and it was so obviously try-hard that people would see this as more significant than soft-core porn. It is not. Not recommended.

Beautifully photographed, lovely young women, virtually no plot or plot motivations. I guess this is a genre of French cinema. Three young women take a boat out on the sea at night. They are lucky to survive when the boat gets wrecked. One of them lies unconscious on the beach and is rescued by a handsome boy. Soon they are sort of owning the island and having various encounters with some young men they have met. All three, plus a beautiful concert pianist, are hard to take your eyes off of. But at some point it slogs along to where there are no real questions. I watched it because the Criterion Collection included it and I have been picking an choosing from their library of films. This one really turned out to be a waste of time. Lots of standing around, posing, and laughing, and doing little else.

This is typical Hamilton. Gorgeous teenage girls and dreamy photography. I must disagree with one of the comments from another poster saying there is no nudity in the film. He must have seen a cut version. I have to say I don't think the plot or the acting are the strong points of Hamiltons movies. It does feel sometimes like a voyeuristic excuse to present beautiful young women in varying degrees of nudity. This may be quite transgressive of western (specially American) taboos, which equate nudity to porn. Overall a quite unique film. Try to get the uncut version because, quite frankly, the whole point of Hamiltons focus is the female body, (he is mainly a photographer after all)

The three girls featured in this are very attractive, but there is little if any nudity. At best a bikini top, maybe one topless shot.It had the potential to be a better film, but was quite slow moving, and other than hoping to see some teen-aged girls in various stages of undress, nothing to sustain my interest.In the end it was worth watching because it is nice to see attractive girls at the beach, in the sun with unpolluted waters, and few obvious signs over commercialisation.I would recommend it, as I would most girls' coming of age films , as they educate at least one-half of the population as to what girls' think, and then , to use Mel Gibson's film, help us understand 'what women want'.Maybe there is a packaged David Hamilton film set, he only made five films, and it would be good to see all five as they are priceless treasures, as they portray beautiful innocence, in a bygone era.