Olivia

Plot synopsis:
Olivia, an English teenager, arrives at a finishing school in France. Olivia finds comfort in the school which differs greatly from her former restrictive English boarding school and where the students and faculty are welcoming.
The majority of the pupils in the school are divided into two camps: those that are devoted to the headmistress, Mlle Julie and those who follow Mlle Cara, an emotionally manipulative invalid who is obsessed with Mlle Julie.
Olivia becomes an immediate favourite of Mademoiselle Cara who shows her a photograph album full of pictures of the history of the school. When Olivia admires a girl in the pictures, Laura, Mlle Cara becomes angry and withdrawn; another pupil later explains that before she left Laura was Mlle Julie's favourite pupil. Later Olivia hears Mlle Julie reading Andromaque and begins to fall in love with her.
Mlle Julie takes Olivia to Paris on a day trip and Olivia becomes more and more obsessed with her. Shortly after Laura arrives and she and Olivia quickly become friends. Olivia asks her if she is in love with Mlle Julie and Laura replies that she loves her but is not in love with her. Later, Laura hears an argument where Mlle Cara accuses Mlle Julie of not loving her and expresses her jealously that both Olivia and Laura love Mlle Julie and not her. That night, before going to bed Mlle Julie passes Olivia's room where she kisses her on the eyes while telling her to go to sleep. Olivia responds by passionately kissing her hands which Mlle Julie tries to play it off as her being overly affectionate.
Around Christmas time Laura leaves the school again confessing to Olivia that she can't bear Mlle Cara's jealousy and warning Olivia to watch out. Directly after she leaves however Olivia goes to Mlle Julie and tells her she loves her.
At the Christmas ball Mlle Julie kisses another pupil on the neck in front of Olivia and later promises to join Olivia in her room later that night and give her something sweet. However Mlle Julie does not come to visit Olivia and the following morning tells her that she didn't go into her room to protect her. Olivia is deeply disappointed and cries herself to sleep in front of the fire in Mlle Julie's room where she is later discovered by Mlle Cara. Mlle Cara is enraged at finding her and attacks her physically telling her she's a disappointment. When Mlle Julie enters the room to see them fighting Mlle Cara accuses her of going into the girls' rooms at night. After their fight Mlle Julie announces that she will be leaving the school, leaving it in the care of Mlle Cara.
The night before she is to leave Mlle Julie enters Olivia's room, confessing that she loves her. She leaves only to return shortly after screaming for Olivia to call for help for Mlle Cara who died from an overdose of chloral. Mlle Julie is heartbroken over her death calling Mlle Cara the only person she ever really loved.

Tags: neo noir, cruelty, murder, violence, revenge, sadist

Review:
A Touch of Surreality.
Somehow one is reminded of Brian de Palmas film "Obsession" when watching this rarely seen German-American production from the early eighties.
Ulli Lommel, once member of Rainer Werner Fassbinders highly intellectual actors group, turned to directing when he still under Fassbinders influence, but after his mentors untimely death he finally turned to more commercial topics.
"Olivia"  or "A Taste of Sin", as it is apparently also known  at first sight looks like pure (S)Exploitation, but there's more to it.
As Lommel says in the short interview that accompanies the films' German DVD release, the idea of the story came to his mind when he, while on a trip with his then-wife Suzanna Love (playing the main part), found out that the London Bridge was rebuild in Arizona.
He used this as the outline for a sort of identity-switch trouble-personality killer-love story  combining two places with two personalities, both of which essentially having been one from the very beginning.
True, the way the story unfolds is far from cinematic brilliance, but nonetheless it is quite entertaining; and in no one way is this modern fairytale the brutal splatter film that others would probably want it to be.
There are some harsh effects, and a few violent scenes are included in the aforementioned DVD as bonus (yet only the material that was originally cut out is seen, which makes some of this bonus shorter than even a second!).
But sex, murder and blood, while still important for the outline, are not the main attractions.
Lommel intensely tries to give his film a psychological touch.
Because of his limited skills in storytelling, he does not succeed.
But still: Olivias rite of passage makes for entertaining viewing, especially is you like that particular touch of weirdness, absurdity and "otherness" that so many great underground pictures from the 70s carry..
Incredibly good.
You all can read the plot summary from IMDb, so I won't write about it.I got my hands on the DVD of "Olivia" yesterday.
DVD cover didn't look great, more like erotic b-film, but WOW!
The film runs only 1 h 20 minutes but many things happens during the film, and you won't be bored.
There is something for everybody; romance, thrill, erotic and murders.
Does that sound awesome combination?
Maybe not, but in this film it is.It looks like a big Hollywood studio film from the end of 1970's, but it was actually made with budget of $500,000.
I have to admit that there are few moments when you can see that it was made with small budget, but it doesn't bother watching.A must see for people who likes to see erotic thriller, but also for the IMDb users here who says that Lommel hasn't done any good film.This is incredible..
Not a slasher classic.
I like Ulli Lommel's film The Bogey Man so much that I have 3 different copies of it; I even have 2 of it's poor sequel.
I also collect many of the 88 Films releases, so when this came out I just had to buy it.
The British blu ray comes with an enticing cover (film is entitled Prozzie) and is part of 88's Slasher Classics Collection.
This, however, is NOT a slasher movie, much more a psychological thriller with a bit of sex and horror thrown in.
I prefer the first half of the film, which is set in London.
It's pretty dark and has a few Lommel touches reminiscent of The Bogey Man. But when the action moves to Arizona the plot becomes pretty silly & unbelievable.
This film grew on me after a second viewing, so I'm glad I hung on to my Blu Ray copy as I had contemplated selling it..
Lommel and Love's Most Accomplished Film.
While Ulli Lommel is best known in the States as the director of the eighties ghost-slasher flick "The Boogey Man", he has directed many other films.
They seem to have deteriorated in quality over the years, but he's still cranking them out, even now in 2009.
In my opinion the eighties were his best years creatively, and alongside "The Boogey Man" he made a series of other gory thrillers, including "The Devonsville Terror", "Brainwaves", and "Olivia".
He cast his then-wife, Dupont heiress Suzanna Love, in all of his films during this period, and even after their divorce she continued working for him.
Suzanna, who had already had small roles in Milos Forman's "Hair", as well as a couple of Lommel's other films, became a fetching and beguiling leading lady, and she brought something sympathetic and touching to all of her performances.
I think that "Olivia" is the best collaboration of their careers.
The title character in "Olivia" is a little girl, living in London, who witnesses the violent murder of her prostitute mother by one of her johns.
Deeply traumatized, Olivia (Love) grows up to be a bored, working-class housewife.
Her belligerent husband, who apparently knows nothing of his wife's experience, is condescending and cruel.
He will not let Olivia work, and she spends her nights watching the hookers who work the nearby London Bridge.
She begins hearing her dead mother's voice in her head, encouraging her to work as a prostitute.
She does, and at her mother's command she murders one of her johns.
She meets an American and falls in love, and when her husband discovers her secret life, he attempts to murder her new man.
But he is killed instead, by a fall from the bridge during the scuffle.
Olivia, afraid of true love and riddled by guilt and fear, flees to America and tries to block the experiences from her mind.
But the man who killed her husband crosses her path again one day, and their affair resumes.
But it appears that her deceased husband is still alive, and he tracks Olivia down and murders the man she loves.
Ultimately, Olivia murders her ex-husband violently with a butcher knife, and dumps his body in the Colorado River.
By the end of the film Olivia is a broken, tragic figure, emotionally disfigured by deep traumas in her life.
She is truly a lost soul, and the ending of the movie is decidedly downbeat.
No worries about a typical Hollywood ending here; "Olivia" generally seems to revel in doing the unexpected, the distasteful, and it ultimately leaves its lead character bereft, shattered, alone, and more than a little unhinged.
It is a brave and original film, one that does not shy away from its own bleak and unsettling nature.
There is a creepy, kinky atmosphere to "Olivia" which is very effective.
The music is perfectly weird, and the many night shots in the film make it a nerve-jangling experience.
It is beautifully photographed, well cast, nicely written, and effectively edited.
There is never a dull moment in the film, and this is, in no small part, due to the main performance by Love.
She throws herself completely into the tawdry, showy role of Olivia, and comes off better than in any of her other films.
Love the actress keeps pace with her director, and in doing so gives the performance of a lifetime.
Olivia is a tour-de-force role, and Love gives it her all, making her character scary and sympathetic at the same time.
Lommel, equally, seems to know exactly what he wants from the material, and how to get it.
Together, they turn this low-budget labor of love into a solid genre entry, one that remains effective and spooky to this very day.
Highly recommended!.
Dumb "Thriller".
Olivia is also known as Prozzie, and either way, it is just as bad.
The prostitute in question is Olivia, who has seen her hooker mommy killed by a client, warping her world view for life.
At first, our heroine is living a domestic life, cooking for her husband and walking the dog.
Then one day, mother dear sends messages from the grave telling Olivia to join the world's oldest profession and do away with all those terrible john's looking for a little sex.She meets Mike, an engineer who is working on a project building a replica of London Bridge in Arizona.
Her husband discovers the affair and is dispensed with rather quickly by psycho girl.
She disappears and is presumed dead by Mikey.
Flash forward to the U.S.A. and Mike finishing the copycat bridge and guess who he sees; a twin of his old lover Olivia, but now she is a real estate agent with an American accent instead of a British one.
Men begin to turn up dead, as our deranged, bipolar bad girl sends more horny guys to their early graves.
No matter which title is used, there is no reason to sit through this wannabe erotic "thriller."