Country Love (1972)

Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

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.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Maria Arnold was one of the greatest early porn stars, unfortunately not getting the attention she deserved back then, or even now in retrospect. She had already moved into XXX territory when this minor softcore vehicle was made.With a country song on the soundtrack as film opens with Maria semi-nude in bed, we're in Southern territory, a cinema backwater dominated by the likes of drive-in favorite Bethel Buckalew at this time.But unlike that auteur's hokey comedies COUNTRY LOVE is fairly grim. With softcore camera angles for the opening strong-X sex scene, a mood of routine and emptiness in the vein of classic minimalism (JEANNE DIELMANS) is established.Maria ventures outside, sashaying around nude in high heels with the same blasé manner that Helen Mirren displayed memorably the same year in Ken Russell's SAVAGE MESSIAH.She's a horny, narcissistic neglected wife. Subplots have her becoming involved with a black man and a group of hippies. More conventional is a bit of wife-swapping late in the film as 1-shot auteur "Jacob Cousseau" tries to cover all sexploitation bases.This is a good vehicle for Arnold, showing off her beauty in a dominant role. She would later return to the country-fried genre a number of times in such silly pictures as COUNTRY HOOKER and DAISY LAY, but her best films remain unsung, e.g., COZY COOL and FOR LOVE OF MONEY.

The most interesting thing about this film is that the producer, Tom Shelly, would go on to produce episodes of Survivor. Otherwise, typical soft-core romp from the seventies. These films were on the way out at the time, being replaced by hard core stuff. The film is interesting in some ways as it does address the dual issues of the counterculture as well as miscegenation; however, it's all done for the purpose of titillation and exploitation. Acting is about par for this sort of film--no better or worse than others of its ilk. You'd really have to have quite a bit of time on your hands to want to watch it though, as it's a very tedious slog.