WasAnnon Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

SpunkySelfTwitter It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

Ava-Grace Willis Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Arianna Moses Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Robert J. Maxwell In the opening scene, the beautiful O (Clery) and her lover (Kier) are together in the back seat, being driven down a luminous road to a place Rene has never taken O before. He orders her gently to remove everything she's wearing under her dress. The patchouli-scented voice of the narrator tells us, "Not knowing where they were going, O was afraid to ask questions." I had a couple of questions though. First, where do you find a woman like this? The second was, Why the hell didn't she ask? The wind up is that the beautiful O is taken into a castle where she vows never to look one of the many Masters in the eye or to speak unless told to. She must wear a garment that allows access to her body from just about every imaginable angle. She must subject herself to unspeakable indignities including chaining and whipping and blindfolding and who knows what all. I haven't gotten to the end yet. I don't know if I can handle it. In my heart, I firmly believe that no woman -- no human being -- should be so humiliated and tortured this way except my ex wife.The book was a sensation and the movie, by Just Jaeckin, was an international hit, following hard upon the heels of "Emmanuelle" and preceding its many sequels, such as "Emmanuelle Meets The Seven Dwarfs." But it left me feeling the way I did after watching David Cronenberg's "Crash", about a cabal of cripples and perverts who get off on watching or participating in dreadful automobile accidents. The general sensation was one of having stumbled into someone else's wet dream.Of course all of this is handled with great delicacy and nuance, and with many signals of import. The narration is elliptical. The musical score lacks only Kenny G. What dialog there is only fills us with wonder -- "She's proud; it sets me aflame." The photographer shot most of the film through a veil of Vaseline. The plot defiantly, stands logic on its head. The film strives desperately to convince us that this isn't garbage we're watching -- it's conneries.Well, that gets the negative stuff out of the way. On the plus side, you have never seen such perfect, scintillating, nickel-plated chains. Also, the women aren't shaven clean all over. You can't tell about the men.I can understand why this was such a scandalous film in 1975, with all the unashamed nudity and bondage. It took us on a Cook's Tour of sexual depravity, through caverns measureless to man. Today, with the internet awash in real perversions and and a diversity of real "O"s, the movie seems terribly dated, a historical curiosity. Not insulting, not carrying any evil baggage, but not much more than kitsch. If you want a more grounded and thoughtful movie about S&M, see "Secretary" with David Spader and Maggie Gylenhall.

mwriter-2 One of the hardest things to do for me is watch a film adapted from a novel I have read. Sadly, one is often expecting more and left with less, and for this reason I resisted watching this movie for many many years. But I can say, the purist might easily find many faults, indeed I had, but as a film I can respect it and recommend it as a good film about romance, titillation and for its time a bold attempt to capture a complex and controversial novel on film.The casting was mostly superb. Each main character was believable, even if they did not fully walk off the pages so to speak. As the title character, Corinne Clery physically fulfilled the part of O, and I found her to have delivered a lovely rendering of the character, as the other actors seemed to also achieve.The Story of O is a love story, and at bottom I think the film artfully delivered a good romance movie. I expected bad pornography but was very pleased with the it, certainly it has some kitsch and the S&M might offend some, but even that actually gets delivered rather gingerly and I thought respectfully. Perhaps that is my greatest concern with the film, that it gently tells a hard story, that it masks what should have been unmasked, but it is unfair to pommel the film over that because I am not certain the real story could have been told on film even in France.It is respectful criticism that I only fault the film for drifting from the story on points that I feel cause the film to become more about filming than storytelling. I also must say that the film at times was too literal from the novel and seemed to lose some of the context that I say this in recognition that the novel is not an easy story to convey because it is subject to a lot of interpretation by the reader.I think the more tragic ending of the book would not have served this film, the apparent happy ending for O and Rene and Sir Stephan makes this film its own interpretation, one I can respect and even enjoy.I recommend a reading of the book to any viewer and feel that if one can view how O is pursuing uninhibited and unconditional love, even at great sacrifice, then both book and movie might have greater impact than a visage of Ms. Clery's lovely body and some kinky overlays of Sadomasochism.

Hippolytos70 Excellent! A masterpiece of a BDSM movie!Corinne Clery is beautiful, marvelous, a real goddess of submission (first) and domination (after her training; be sure for this!) The delicate and high-class elegance of her face and her body is incomparable! And her grins, full with pain and (not encrypted) desire and last, when the whip smacks, again and again, her naked flesh! And her full-confident, hedonic, lustful smile when she whips mercilessly, as a mistress herself now, her slut slave!From the very moment I've seen the movie I can't stop fantasizing Mistress Corinne Clery make me her slave! Ordering me to kneel and kiss her feet! Smacking me and whipping me, again and again! Oh, Mistress!! I beg you before your feet; Give me the honor to serve you as your slave, to be useful for you to show upon me your dominion, your power in all your goddess glory!!

gridoon "The Story Of O" (as a film) is the work of a man whose sexual values belong in the Middle Ages, and whose way of thinking is completely detached from normal human behavior. Jaeckin must have been thinking that he was creating an important work of art (solemn voice-over narration, arty shots through mirrors, etc.), and not the sick and misogynistic fantasy that his film actually is. Most of the performances are bad, but Corinne Clery does deserves some credit for her courage to take on such a role. In the purely "erotic" department, the movie gets kind of hot only in two lesbian scenes, but those are very brief. Nudity is plentiful, but the material that surrounds it is often insufferable. (*1/2)