Yesterday my homegirl m. Cody sat me down to watch one of her favorite recent DVD finds, a foreign-language film called Secrets of a Call Girl. Originally released in 1973 the flick is an example of Italian exploitation cinema, with gangsters, pimps, sexy women, bloody shoot-outs, nudity and dubious morality on display throughout. I found the movie, a mix of gritty exploitationisms, 1970’s “New Hollywood” film-school pulp revisionism, the cosmopolitan internationalism of European cinema, and the low-rent exoticness of soft-core porn, surprisingly appealing visually. And not just because of it’s sumptuous portrayal of female flesh either!
Like any decent exploitation movie the best thing about Secrects of a Call Girl was the score, courtesy of composer Luciano Michelini, perhaps best known to modern ears as the man behind “Frolic,” the song which opens every episode of the improvisational HBO comedy series Curb Your Enthusiasm. So impressed by Michelini’s score was I that a search of the internet was launched in an attempt to get my hands on some audio format of the soundtrack while the DVD was still spinning in my player. Unsurprisingly I’ve come up empty-handed at every turn. But in honor of the whimsical love-theme, bombastic chase music, and funky interludes I’m unlikely to hear outside the film itself, I decided today was as good a day to get my cinematic Euro-Pop on as any.
With it’s dramatic string intro and playful-but-melancholy acoustic guitar melodies “Mademoiselle,” the title track from Parisian chansonnier Berry’s recently released debut album, sounds like it could have come right off of a soundtrack to some romantic foreign film of the ’60s or ’70s. Or at least recycled on the soundtrack of a more contemporary Wes Anderson flick. And while I don’t understand a lick of French, making the lyrics a mystery to me, Berry’s vocal hits the sort of notes that convey a visual story all their own through melody and emotion. She breaks down the language barrier on the only English-language tune on the LP, a sensuously sentimental romp well suited for an Emmanuelle-esque skin-flick titled “Love Affair.” While the dusty twang and harmonica of “Le Bonheur” reminded me a lot of Harry Nilsson’s “Everybody’s Talkin’” from Midnight Cowboy.
Berry “Mademoiselle”
The Spanish-born, Sweden-raised, Madrid-based Ana Laan doesn’t stray far from the basic tenets of drama-infused Pop heavily flavored by Folk and Jazz (particularly Bossa Nova) that make for such soundtrack readiness, but she embroiders her compositions with Lo-Fi laptop electronics. Both elements of her sound — the dreamy piano, deliberately plucked acoustic guitar & sweet vocals, as well as the skittering programmed hi-hats, reverb-drenched snares and computerized blips & bleeps — can be heard on the title track of her newest disc Chocolate and Roses. A Spanish-language number titled “Ex” exhibits a mischievous regretfulness which calls to mind Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Amélie. And the creepingly soulful Jazz of “Mas Alla De Lo Razonable” gives off the air of sex and paranoia present in both Blaxploitation cinema and old-school espionage reels.
Ana Laan “Mas Alla De Lo Razonable”
And who knows, I still might come up on that Secrets of a Call Girl soundtrack some day. But in the mean time I’m content to make more new music my own personal soundtrack.
- El Keter
