Searching round for the Christina Lindberg-starring Anita,I happily stumbled on a box set with the flick. Whilst it is called "Christina Lindberg's Erotica", the set came out during the peak era of odd DVD collections, which is presumably why a title was included not featuring Lindberg! This led to me learning the language of love.

View on the film:

Done a few years before the Golden Age of Adult Cinema started rising, director Torgny Wickman keeps to a matter of fact manner,with the dry discussions on sexual education being saved by the meek clothes. Keeping clinical,Wickman pairs the shot with the lights off sex scenes with animation detailing the intercourse, and chopping off any feelings of erotica from a loving language.

This is a real curiosity from the vaults, a late 60s Swedish sex education film which became an enormous box office hit across Europe and even, when it was finally released uncut with an X certificate, in the UK in 1973 (it was initially refused a certificate); this is historically interesting, as The Language of Love (as it was titled in English speaking markets) features some sections of actual hardcore footage, with close ups of fingers masturbating vaginas and a penis penetrating one. The film is apparently meant as a serious attempt to allay people's fears and misconceptions about sex & improve the sex lives of heterosexual couples, but undoubtedly the enormous box office success of the film was due to the prurient interest of the public.

It is hard to image people actually sitting in a cinema and watching the film. The bulk of the footage has four "sexperts" (sex therapists plus a gynaecologist) sitting around in a living room, swilling gallons of tea & coffee and talking earnestly about sex. I don't know about the time of the film's release, but these days the sexperts chat is unintentionally hilarious, as the foursome are humourless, po-faced and rather brusque in their talk (as well as being an extremely plain verging on ugly bunch).

Inter-cut with this mirth-producing talk are mockumentary scenes ( purporting to illustrate the findings of famous sex researchers Masters and Johnson) in which couples talk about and do the sex thing. Here the film falls even further into risibility, as although these couples are meant to represent (or actually be) real people, they are so one-dimensional, robotic and mono-subject orientated that they seem like no one anyone has even met in this world, rather being dead ringers for the inhabitants of some future Brave New World-type dystopia. The most striking moment comes when the most focused-upon couple, who've previously experienced sexual problems, talk to each other after a bout of now satisfying sex and tell each other that they are now "real" - two less "real" people you'll have trouble finding in the history of the cinema.

The last third of the film is mostly taken up by the gynaecologist going about his business, inserting diaphragms, coils and caps into various young women or advising them to go onto the pill. This is followed by a completely unnecessary montage of shots showing a red-light district, pages from lurid pornographic magazines and couples walking around lewdly - all supposedly to illustrate what's wrong with society's prurient attitude to sex but edited and scored in such a way as to encourage an adolescent and voyeuristic attitude.

The film is poorly shot and goes on for too long, yet it gets extra stars for its camp value today. There's also a saccharine and quite repulsive score by Benny and Bjorn pre-ABBA. This is, btw, the film which Travis Bickle takes Betsy to see in Taxi Driver; the fact that she was offended instead of sitting there laughing her head off shows how unsuitable a date she was! The Language of Love is little more now than a historical document, and a testament to how self-deluding the experts in pseudo-sciences can get as they pretend to serious encouragement of a healthy loving sex life whilst adding to the creation of a culture of voyeurism and conformity.

So, after all these years, the UK censors finally allow me to see infamous little sex education movie. Acquiring this within the Christine Lindberg box set ( and no she is not in it!) I'd thought I might pop it in the player and get a flavour or fast forward through the anticipated 50 minutes or so running time. But no, this runs almost 100 minutes and isn't at all bad. Hardly dated either, except the sex educators are all about 50 whereas they somehow would all be more like 20 if this were made today. Sound information and advice, saucy clips and if most of the performers do look a bit frightful, they still do well enough and the ghastly look of some may be due to deterioration of the film stock. Just towards the end the interviews and examination for various contraceptive devices seemed to go on a bit but otherwise, I found this well put together and surprisingly enjoyable. Fetishes were mentioned but not shown and there was no mention of homosexuality.