Life Size (1975 review)
From Oui, March 1975. –- J.R.
Life Size. A wealthy dentist (Michel Piccoli) buys a shapely, life-size female doll and immediately falls hopelessly in love with it. He dances with it, gently places it in a dentist’s chair to go over its bridgework, takes showers with it, talks to it and masturbates into its working orifices. When his indulgent mother (Valentine Tessier) finds him curled up in bed with it, she chuckles, dresses it up in old-fashioned clothes and briefly adopts it as a knitting companion. When lsabelle (Rada Rassimov), his wife, starts imitating the doll out of desperation, he dumps her into a closet and moves into a new flat with his synthetic bride. He even video-tapes their mock wedding for his amusement. But when his video-tape machine reveals that a Spanish repairman has been using his beloved for more immediate and less romantic purposes, he starts to “punish” his doll. The trouble with Luis Berlanga’s exhaustive movie is that what he has to say could probably be squeezed into about ten minutes without much sweat. -– JONATHAN ROSENBAUM
