The Berlin Affair

Cavani's monumentally dull opus has little to offer even the raincoat trade. Darling Lili is back among the kinky Nazis (remember Charlotte and Dirk smearing each other with jam in The Night Porter?). This time it's Berlin, 1938, where bored diplomat's wife Louise joins an art class and encounters the sensuous Mitsuko, daughter of the Japanese ambassador. Soon they're fumbling away inside each other's kimonos, until Louise's ambitious hubby discovers the awful truth. Filmed with a curious kind of glazed indifference, never has sex every which way seemed so boring, interminable and unnecessary. DT.