wrv-16858
'Exponerad' (= Swedish for 'Exposed') above all evokes the mood of the early 1970-s. Complete with the then current idealistic touch about 'free love', for which Sweden was famous at the time (AIDS wasn't there yet).Add to this the picturing of some nice Swedish countryside scenery, all bedded in a credible down-to-earth story.Supported by a number of nudity shots, female lead Christina Lindberg performs your girl-next-door reasonably well. She convincingly manages to carry this film to its end.Those around in the early Seventies will surely warm up watching 'Exponerad'. For those who weren't, I guess this film must be pretty mediocre.
jaibo
Lena, a nubile young lass, has been seeing an older man behind the back of her young boyfriend Jan. When she tells Jan, he rewards her with a good few smacks around the chops and she flees town. Lena hitches a lift with with a middle-aged businessman, who parks down a side road and rapes her. But this turns out to be an idle fantasy of Lenas, and when the man drops her off she is picked up by a male/female couple of swingers who she takes to her boyfriend's mother's cabin in the woods. The three of them share an idyll there, broken only by another fantasy of Lena's that the woman is murderously jealous of her, and late at night she watches them making love on the living room floor.The next day Jan appears and, after a car chase (which ends with a fantasy from Lena of she & the couple burning to death), Jan drags his errant girlfriend back to the town. There she confesses that the older man, Helge, has been blackmailing her into taking part in orgies because he has some nudie pictures of her. Helge is violent and obsessed with Lena, and the middle section of the film is split between the girl getting lovey-dovey with Jan and being stalked by the menacing Helge. Eventually Lena runs away from Jan when his mother discovers the nudie shots (calling her a whore) & is followed home by the stalking Helge. He gets into the house and, in a particularly creepy and uncomfortable scene, ties her to the bed (with her collusion), cuts off her dress and has sex with her. She gets an arm free and uses the knife to stab her lover/assailant in the back. There follows an extraordinary shot in which she remains tied up (by both hands) with his stabbed corpse lying on top of her. The next day, Lena's mother arrives back from holiday. Helge has gone and Lena is taken shopping for a new dress. She meets Jan and all seems okay, but for the fact that Lena is still thinking about seeing Helge. There is some question by now as to whether Helge actually exists or whether he's another fantasy of Lena's.Exposed is intriguing because it suggests that Lena's sexuality is a complex and messy state of affairs, and that there is no longer the surety that she would prefer to be in a "normal" relationship with a bland ordinary bloke - perhaps her sexual life runs to more exotic and dangerous pursuits? Or perhaps Helge is a fantasy of the predatory male gaze which will always follow her, thinking about coercion, submission and violence? There's no ground for the definite to exist in Lena's life, torn as she is between a bland reality and a sadistic world of fantasy which is itself potentially true.Lena's story takes place in nicely furnished but faceless rooms (sometimes when Lena is alone in her bedroom, the visuals are reminiscent of Munch) or what Deleuze would call "any-space-whatevers": shopping precincts, streets, petrol stations and stairwells. This is a world which is meaningless but for a series of impulses, be they normalising or sexually deviant. Lena has no definite self, she is a series of reactions or acquiescences to the desires of the men in her life, which might or might not be her desires. In the end, though a lot of flesh has been exposed in the film, the self is as opaque as it was before any camera was pointed at it.Christina Lindberg's affectless face has rarely been better used than in the role of the nullity, Lena. The character confesses that "I feel too little and know too much" and in the world of experience that the film exposes, Lena is not alone in her lack of feeling: as she and her mother walk as typical consumers along the commercial streets of the town, they pass a sex-shop district with windows displaying the same kind of pictures that Lena might have posed for; she asks her mother what she thinks of them, and the mother replies "soon everything will be like that; nobody will feel anything any more." In its modest way, Exposed is a prophecy of a world which was, as the sexual revolution ended, just being born: a world of impulse and craving, the vain search for satisfaction, boring conformism or soulless promiscuity and kicks.Scored with a haunting, harmonica-led theme tune and filmed in stark realist colours, Exposed deserves to have a higher reputation.
Snowygooner
...I cannot say a lot about the film as the version I have is in its original language with no subtitles. That is a shame because Christina's character Lena had a lot of dialogue and it would have been interesting to hear what she had to say. Anyway, Christina plays a young girl who after a row with her boyfriend hitchhikes across the countryside in Sweden, meets up with a couple of nudist, and spends some time at their log cabin. Her boyfriend eventually finds her and takes her back to the city where unbeknown to him she continues an affair with a more older and perverted man.Exponerad is quite surreal and is told in flashbacks and dreamlike sequences. There is a lot of nudity; Christina spends most of her time in various states of undress and you get a bondage scene and an attempted rape on our beautiful heroine too. I notice that IMDb has a tag line for this film that states that it was banned in 36 countries. After watching this film I have to add that if that statement is true then I cannot see why. There is nothing too explicit on show to warrant that.So, If you are a Christina Lindberg fan, like me, then seek out this film. You will not be disappointed. For anyone else or anybody expecting an exploitation classic along the lines of 'Thriller: a Cruel Picture'. I would have to say that you should move along. There is nothing of any interest for you here.
Spectrocon
Cristina Lindberg starred in a few Swedish movies in the 70's and also in some German porn movies for those who didn't know.A lot of these exploitation movies she starred in were OK but not greater than that. Although almost all of the movies she was in sucked big time including this film, Thriller - A cruel picture is worth seeing. Quentin Tarantino was inspired by some of her movies but most of all Thriller.This movie however is very weird. Cristina plays a character named Lena, a 17 year old girl who seems lost and keeps daydreaming all the time. She goes on a very short road trip and gets in some trouble and from there the story gets duller and duller. Although this movie has a lot of nudity in it and Cristina was somewhat of hotty, this movie isn't worth seeing at all. For the Swedish crowd it could be of some interest considering that you'll see Sweden in 70's and the film itself is considered to be a classic.Conclusion: If you like Cristina Lindberg and those types of movies you should perhaps see it if you don't like those types of movies, watch something else.
