The Amorous Sisters (1980)

"Julchen und Jettchen, die verliebten Apothekerstöchter" (what a long title) or "The Amorous Sisters" or "Come Play with Me 3" is a Swiss film from 1982 and it is written and directed by Erwin C. Dietrich. The man is known for some trash films from the 1970s and 1980s that include lots of graphic nudity and many many failed attempts at comedy. This 80-minute film we have here is the best example of that. It is never entertaining and you really need to be very confused (or very very horny) in order to see a quality film in this. I personally did not. The acting is pretty bad and the script is even way worse. One could almost say the script is non-existent as it is so extremely absurd at times. This absurdity was the filmmaker's attempt at being entertaining, but is it really fun to watch a sex education teacher expose her genitals to her students, because it's closer to real life than drawings or exhibits? It's up to you to decide. Or a woman is in a forest and a man (with a long trench coat) appears and exposes himself in front of her. Guess what happens next? Right! They have sex of course. So yeah, this is what you can expect here. I personally found it very uninspired and embarrassing. I highly recommend you to stay far far away.

March 2013:With my Birthday having just gone by,I was happily caught by surprise,when a DVD seller kindly sent me 2 German Sex Comedies as a present.After enjoying the first movie, (1973's Swedish Playgirls)I got set to view the title,only to sadly discover that the film has entirely in German,with no subtitles.January 2015:After having given up on seeing an English version of the movie,I was thrilled when a DVD seller sent me an E-Mail,to let me know that he had finally tracked down an English dubbed version of the title,which led to me getting ready to at last meet Julchen & Jettchen.The plot:Whilst their mum and dad are busy running the local family shop,Julchen and her sister Jettchen are sent to an all-girls boarding school,where they and their fellow students pass the time bored out of their minds during dull lessons.Feeling that the students are now old enough to learn about anatomy and sex,the school hires a new teacher called Barbara Moose to teach the girls about the changes going on to their body.As the girls take a "hands on" approach to the lessons,they each start to notice that Moose appears to be sexually frustrated,which leads to Julchen & Jettchen deciding that it is time for the pupil to become the teacher.View on the film:Backed by a surprisingly warm folk score from Walter Baumgartner,co-writer/ (along with Christine Lembach) director Erwin C. Dietrich uses the country side boarding school setting to give the movie a lush appearance,with Dietrich keeping away from giving the title any hint of grubbiness,by showing each of the beautiful actress in a full,crystal clear style.Whilst the film is firmly rooted to the German Sex Comedy genre,Dietrich does not tone down the sex at all,which despite featuring a rather off- putting,unexpected sex scene, (which involves stealing a horse on horse sex scene from the 1975 movie The Beast!)largely stays on the frisky side of things,with the graphic lesbian scenes between the students (played by actresses who are clearly 10 years older than their characters) being extremely alluring,as Barbara Moose finds out what happens when you meet Julchen & Jettchen.

This soft core film from Swiss filmmaker Erwin C. Dietrich, stars Brigitte Lahaie and Flore Sollier as Jenny and Juliet, the Amorous Sisters of the title. Set in a Swiss finishing school, the only teacher seems to be Miss Brown (Barbara Moose) with a class of seven girls and the only subject on the curriculum seems to be sex education lessons which the girls are more than willing to put into practise. The director has no qualms in showing both male and female full-frontal nudity, whilst lesbianism and self-pleasuring in the dormitory after lights-out is the norm in this school. Jenny's boyfriend is smuggled into the dormitory to give the girls an impromptu sex lesson. There is a surreal and fascinating sequence in which Miss Brown and her charges are running naked through he forest with butterfly nets, all shown in slow motion with a haunting music track. There is also a subplot in which Mike Montana plays a he-man character who has lost the ability to satisfy his wife in the bedroom but Jenny and Juliet devise a cunning and sexy plan to rectify the problem. If only all problems could be solved in this way. The director has picked some picturesque Swiss locations for filming. The castle used as the school is Schloss Widen, (sometimes spelt Wyden) Ossingen, Canton Zurich. The city of Zurich is used for the night time rooftop panorama and also near the end of the film when Jenny and Juliet are walking through the old part of town, the twin towers of the Grossmunster Kirche can be seen in the background. The nature trek was filmed in the Canton of Ticino. The girls walking over the double-arched footbridge was filmed at Lavertezzo in Val Verzasca, but as yet the other villages used in the sequence remain a mystery. This film is an enjoyable romp from a time long gone and one may wonder if films like this could ever be made again.

The exploitation branch of the Swiss film industry consisted for a long time of just one man: Erwin C. Dietrich. This film is a rather typical product of his early 1980s softporn period.As in almost all films directed by Dietrich, Peter and Walter Baumgartner were responsible for cinematography and music, respectively. Both did an exceptional job here, although one might object that Walter Baumgartner's beautiful musical score has little connection with story and characters. However, it fits very well with these plentiful depictions of blossoming fruit trees Dietrich is so keen on, and my best guess is that these blossoms serve as an allegory for the blossoming young ladies the movie is about.Or rather, it is about showing these women prancing around in the nude - I even recall seeing them in that state hunting butterflies with butterfly nets, in slow motion, but I may have been hallucinating. Dietrich is an admirer of the fully-developed female form, and thus - although our young ladies attend the ubiquitous girls-only boarding school - they appear to be well into their twenties. The only lessons we ever get to observe are sex education lessons, and these scenes are directly lifted from Dietrich's earlier film 'Mädchen ohne Männer'.A second story line sees a well-tanned muscle man (Mike Montana?) failing his wife (Jane Baker) in the most delicate of marital duties. Although there is a connection to our boarding-school girls, this connection is highly unconvincing.The word 'story' also hints at the biggest weakness of this film, and the weaknesses of so much of Dietrich's other output. There is not much of a story to start with, and the pacing and editing destroy any remaining sense of coherence.As a product for the cinema, there were limits to how much could be shown in 1980, but these limits had to be exploited to the full - if only for commercial reasons. The result is a surprisingly large number of female masturbation scenes, which also tend to go on for too long - a deficiency normally associated with hardcore pornography. Most of these scenes were cut or at least shortened in the UK release, unwittingly improving the film's pacing. Still, the 2002 DVD release is the version to be seen, especially as the picture quality is pristine.