''Monamour'' is a 2006 Italian
erotic
Eroticism () is a quality that causes sexual feelings, as well as a philosophical contemplation concerning the aesthetics of sexual desire, sensuality, and romantic love. That quality may be found in any form of artwork, including painting, scul ...
romance film
Romance films or movies involve romantic love stories recorded in visual media for broadcast in theatres or on television that focus on passion, emotion, and the affectionate romantic involvement of the main characters. Typically their journey ...
directed by
Tinto Brass
Giovanni "Tinto" Brass (born 26 March 1933) is an Italian film director and screenwriter. In the 1960s and 1970s, he directed many critically acclaimed avant-garde films of various genres. Today, he is mainly known for his later work in the er ...
.
Plot
Marta is a young
Nymphomaniac
Hypersexuality is extremely frequent or suddenly increased libido. It is controversial whether it should be included as a clinical diagnosis used by mental healthcare professionals. Nymphomania and satyriasis were terms previously used for the c ...
housewife, married to a man named Dario, who works for a successful book publisher and is wealthy. Despite loving her husband, Marta is sexually unsatisfied and finds their sex life dull and predictable, having resorted to reading erotic novels and frequent
masturbation
Masturbation is the sexual stimulation of one's own genitals for sexual arousal or other sexual pleasure, usually to the point of orgasm. The stimulation may involve hands, fingers, everyday objects, sex toys such as vibrators, or combinatio ...
to satisfy herself. Marta dreams often of her and Dario's younger days and writes in a journal to express the feelings she can't explain to Dario. Marta and Dario are staying away from their home in a hotel in
Mantua
Mantua ( ; it, Mantova ; Lombard language, Lombard and la, Mantua) is a city and ''comune'' in Lombardy, Italy, and capital of the Province of Mantua, province of the same name.
In 2016, Mantua was designated as the Italian Capital of Culture ...
during the
Festivaletteratura
Festivaletteratura is a literary festival, held in Mantua, Italy, since 1997. Its peculiar formula is to host five days of small-sized lectures by authors from all over the world. The event is run mostly by volunteers, numbering around 700 in tota ...
.
While at an art gallery, a young man follows Marta as she walks around, while taking pictures of her. Eventually, the stranger grabs her and forcibly kisses and gropes her, before Marta is able to break away and run off due to a crowd of students on a field trip entering and distracting him.
Later that night, while Dario is dressing for a party he's attending with his colleagues, Marta informs him of the assault, which he seems unconcerned by and eventually dismisses as a fantasy born of her dissatisfaction. Marta insults Dario and tells him she enjoyed the encounter, at which point Dario jokingly dares her to go to the party without wearing any panties.
Marta and Dario arrive at the party, with Marta having taken Dario's dare seriously and worn no panties, without his knowledge. At the party, Marta encounters the stranger again and after briefly dancing with him they move to a remote location where Marta begins giving him a blowjob, only to be interrupted by Marta's friend Sylvia and two others finding them. Marta and Sylvia walk to the bathroom together, leaving the stranger and Sylvia's two friends behind. In the bathroom, Marta describes her sexual problems to Sylvia, who suggests that she cheats on her husband more often to make him jealous. She also suggests trying
anal sex
Anal sex or anal intercourse is generally the insertion and thrusting of the erect penis into a person's anus, or anus and rectum, for sexual pleasure.Sepages 270–271for anal sex information, anpage 118for information about the clitoris. ...
. She reveals one of the two others she came to the party with is her secret lover, named François, and claims her husband has improved sexually since she had an affair with him.
Returning to their hotel room, Marta reveals to Dario that she wore no panties while at the party and had another encounter with the stranger, who Dario seems to know and describes as a
whoremonger. Marta describes her encounter in detail to Dario, getting them both aroused, and they have very quick and mediocre sex together, with Marta still unable to achieve orgasm. Afterwards, Marta walks out onto the balcony, where she masturbates while thinking of her encounters with the stranger. Two men watch from their windows and masturbate, which arouses Marta further. After she orgasms, one of the men applauds her as she walks back inside.
In the morning, Marta receives a letter from the stranger, referring to himself as Leon, who tells her of his location at a restaurant and asks her to meet him there. Thrilled, Marta begins to dress, before seeing a letter from Dario also asking her to meet. She destroys both letters and leaves to meet with Leon.
After arriving at the restaurant, Marta waits for an hour before Leon arrives. Though Marta is initially angry, Leon manages to calm her and make her laugh. He continues to joke with her while fingering her under the table, and implies through conversation that he's had affairs with the wives of many managers at the Publishing company. The two leave for the bathroom without eating.
Dario enters the hotel room, searching for documents he had forgotten, and finds Marta's journal which she had hidden in a drawer. He reads it, learning of her dissatisfaction with their marriage and sex life, as well as the full details of her encounters with Leon, which at this point he had still believed to be fantasy. She details her plan of meeting with Leon. Dario finds himself uncomfortably aroused, and places the journal back where he found it before leaving the hotel.
Some time later, Marta and Sylvia get a massage together, during which Marta experiences flashbacks to her and Leon having anal sex in the restaurant bathroom. Marta and Sylvia converse while left alone about Leon, where Marta tells Sylvia she followed her advice. Sylvia suggests that her and Marta have group sex with Leon and François.
Back at the hotel room, Marta writes in her journal, stating that she fears Leon may prefer Sylvia over her if they were to have group sex. Dario walks in on her writing, at which point he confronts her about his suspicions of her cheating, yelling at her, hitting her, and calling her a slut. Marta calls him a
cuckold
A cuckold is the husband of an adulterous wife; the wife of an adulterous husband is a cuckquean. In biology, a cuckold is a male who unwittingly invests parental effort in juveniles who are not genetically his offspring. A husband who is aw ...
and leaves to take a bath, while Dario drinks and trashes their hotel room. Dario once more finds Marta's journal, reading it and continuing to insult her as she falls asleep in the bath.
Marta has a bizarre dream in which Dario abandons her naked in a forest during heavy rain. While wandering through the forest, Marta encounters Leon having sex with Sylvia, before he turns his attention to her and has anal sex with her against a tree while others, including the school students who caught them during their first encounter and the men who watched Sylvia masturbate on the balcony, watch and masturbate together. From behind a tree, a man wearing a hat and trench coat watches, taking no other action.
Marta wakes up alone, and finds a letter from Dario in which he apologizes for his actions and asks her to come to the closing party of the Festivaletteratura with him. Marta notices her journal next to the letter and wonders aloud if Dario has read it. She calls a phone number that Leon gave her and begs him to meet with her again. He obliges and directs her to another hotel. Marta hangs up and leaves her panties on top of Dario's letter for him to find.
Marta leaves the hotel early and sits on a park bench. There, she flashes two men playing music across from her, who then approach and begin to touch her. The man in the coat from her dream appears and shoots both the men and Marta. Marta awakes on the park bench, revealing the shooting to be another dream. Marta walks into the hotel Leon informed her of and the front desk clerk directs her to Leon's room as he stares at her suggestively.
Marta enters Leon's room, where he lies smoking in his bed. His room is covered in drawings of naked women. Marta finds the pictures he took of her in the art gallery when they first met and smiles at them. Marta tells Leon they can't keep having the affair due to her marriage. Leon disregards this and begins kissing and groping Marta, after which she begs him to have sex with her. They have sex, during which Leon degrades Marta, arousing her. After they both orgasm, Marta falls asleep, and Leon sits and draws her in a sketchbook as she sleeps. After she wakes, Leon puts a blindfold on Marta, claiming he has a gift for her. He takes photos of her while she poses for him. Someone knocks on the door, which Leon answers while insisting Marta stay blindfolded. The front desk clerk enters, carrying a bottle of wine. He pours a glass and strips naked. Marta drinks the wine, and has sex with the front desk clerk while Leon photographs them in various positions. While the front desk clerk has sex with her, Leon moves behind Martha and begins to have anal sex with her.
After the threesome concludes, Martha wakes up and removes the blindfold, staring at the pictures Leon took of her. Marta tells Leon about the party Dario wants her to attend, and she admits her sadness about having to return home with Dario soon. Leon reveals the drawing he made of Marta, saying it will help her overcome her feelings. Leon tells Marta that she'll be spending the night with him.
At the party, Dario finds Sylvia and asks where Marta is, to which Sylvia brushes him off. When Dario claims he doesn't understand what's happened to Marta, Sylvia tells him that women want to be taken by men, not understood.
At another party, Marta dances suggestively in front of Leon while a band plays, carelessly letting her breasts fall out of her dress and flashing several onlookers, many of whom remark on her beauty and body. After the song she dances to ends, Marta and Leon have sex, remaining mostly clothed, while others avert their eyes or look confused and shocked. The band plays another song, while Marta has an internal monologue about the sexual experiences she's had and ponders the reactions others would have if she ran away with Leon and didn't return with Dario. The song ends as Marta and Leon both orgasm, moaning loudly.
Marta returns to her hotel room early that morning, trying not to wake Dario as she searches for her things. Dario wakes and yells at her, asking her where she was overnight. When Marta tells Dario she was dancing with Sylvia, he tells her that he saw Sylvia at the party and she couldn't have been with Marta. Marta tells Dario that if he read her journal he would know why she is lying. He calls her a whore before grabbing her and throwing her on the bed. He has anal sex with Marta while degrading her, and the two finally enjoy sex together for the first time in years.
While the credits play, Sylvia and François run into Leon, who is smoking by his car. Sylvia gets in the car, asking François to take her baggage in a different car. Leon gets in the car, glances at Marta's balcony, and drives off with Sylvia, leaving François alone. François looks at the ground, and notices a pair of panties that have been left behind.
Principal cast
Availability
The film is available to buy in
DVD
The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kin ...
format on sites such as
Amazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc. ( ) is an American multinational technology company focusing on e-commerce, cloud computing, online advertising, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence. It has been referred to as "one of the most influential economi ...
. The
Blu-ray Disc
The Blu-ray Disc (BD), often known simply as Blu-ray, is a Digital media, digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 2005 and released on June 20, 2006 worldwide. It is designed to supersede the DVD format, and c ...
version released on 19 April 2011.
References
External links
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2006 films
2006 LGBT-related films
2000s erotic drama films
Films directed by Tinto Brass
Italian erotic drama films
Italian LGBT-related films
Lesbian-related films
Bisexuality-related films
Female bisexuality in film
2000s Italian-language films
Adultery in films
2006 drama films
2000s Italian films
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