It has only been recently, since starting at Inside Pulse Movies, that I have had any interest in art house, soft-core pornographic films. Thanks to movies like Radley Metzger’s sensual Score, though, I have come to appreciate this genre for what it has to offer to the world of cinema. Schoolgirl Report 7: What the Heart Must Thereby… takes all that Metzger tries to do with his art house pornographic films and throws it out the window. Instead, it delivers a shallow, slow-paced, sex film with little artistic merit.
It feels as if Schoolgirl Report 7 forces a story into the film only because it has to in order to be considered an “art house pornographic film” instead of just “bad porn.” The movie opens with a sister visiting her brother’s apartment to see if the rumors of him owning a brothel are true. They are, and she is quickly mistaken for a new prostitute by one of the brothels regular attendees. The regular demands to have sex with her, but she refuses. This results in a fight between her, the regular, and her brother, causing the police to invade the brothel, and putting all the young prostitutes and brothel owner on trial. From here, each of the young girls tells their story on how they came to work at the brothel. These tales are usually of their first sexual encounters, and are told in flashback style. This works fine enough, but once we leave the courtroom and see the parents sitting in the hallway (as well as the regular who pressed charges on the brothel owner) is when things get really weird. Not only do the young girls tell their stories, but also the parents in the hallway have their turn to tell each other a sexual tale. The plot eventually wraps up, but the ending will not matter to virtually anyone who watches the film. The plot is shallow, and completely inconsequential.
One of the biggest problems of Schoolgirl Report 7 is the pacing. The stories begin interesting, but become monotonous as the movie progresses, and by the 45-minute mark will have the audience checking their watches to see if it is almost over. When the parents start telling stories, the viewer realizes that they are not here to see what happens to the young girls, but to gawk at how many unrelated sexual stories one writer can fit into a single film. It gets absurd at times, and this absurdity turns the audience off.
Speaking of potentially turning the audience off, this being a German film means accepting different cultural values for most viewers, and none of the girls in the film are over 18 years old (I am talking about the characters in the story, not the actresses themselves). Most were 17, and one was “just barely 16″; all were still in high school. This might be a wonderful fantasy for some viewers, but might leave others feeling cold.
In a film like this, the director’s handling of the sexual encounters is of utmost importance. Schoolgirl Report 7 ends up feeling more like a bad porn than a sensual, sexual pornographic film, though. Yes, some of the women in the movie are attractive, but they were very rarely involved in good sex scenes; most just ripped off their clothes and went at it, which is nothing more than what anyone could get by searching for porn online.
There are no beautiful filming techniques, no story worth knowing, and no sexual encounters that bring anything new to the genre. This is a bland, boring film that even tons of naked women cannot save. There is simply no reason to waste 90 minutes on Schoolgirl Report 7: What the Heart Must Thereby….
Schoolgirl Report 7: What the Heart Must Thereby… is presented in an Anamorphic Widescreen, 1.66:1 transfer. The picture does not hold up well at all, and this transfer (from the original 1974 film) looks bad. It is filled with grain, imperfections, and some random blackouts that occur during the film. Compared to other movies in this genre that were recently brought to DVD, such as Score, Schoolgirl Report 7 is a major disappointment. More should have been done to make this transfer worth watching.
The DVD lists nothing about the audio options, but I imagine it is only a 2.0 option. The audio was fine, and was spoken completely in German. There are English subtitle options, but that is all.
There are no special features to be found on this DVD.
With a bad DVD transfer, a slow-paced, pointless plot, un-sexy sex scenes, and absolutely no special features, Schoolgirl Report 7: What the Heart Must Thereby… is worth skipping. In a genre that has Radley Metzger and Tinto Brass, Schoolgirl Report 7 comes off as the perfect example of a B-level art house film. Unfortunately for it, I don’t imagine the audience of B-level art house films is quite as prominent as, say, audiences of B-level horror films.
Impulse Pictures presents Schoolgirl Report 7: What the Heart Must Thereby…. Directed by: Ernst Hofbauer. Starring: Elike Deuringer, Puppa Armbruster, and Margot Mahler. Written by: Gunther Heller. Running time: 93 minutes. Rating: Not Rated. Released on DVD: December 14, 2010.
