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Her and She and Him
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray B - United Kingdom - 88 Films Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (26th August 2025). |
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The Film
 Greta (Au Pair Girls' Astrid Frank) hitches her way from Sweden to Paris to study art history ("Because Paris is Paris") and has a cozy room in a boarding house lined up; that is until the landlady's husband tries to assault her. Needing to make the rent for shabbier digs, she tries to become a model and just barely escapes a lech (director Max Pécas regular Michel Vocoret, Young Casanova) and takes to panhandling on the street playing the guitar and singing, quickly discovering that "the kindness of strangers" always comes at a price. She is taken in by beautiful Claude (From Ear to Ear's Nicole Debonne) who turns out to be a lesbian and takes advantage of her in her sleep. Although disgusted, Greta accepts the advise of the similarly lowdown and destitute, deciding to fake it until she makes it. She accepts gifts and affection from Claude but grows weary of her jealousy and possessiveness when she finally gets a job modeling for painter Mathias Decas (I am a Nymphomaniac's Yves Vincent) and falling for Decas' young assistant Jean (Frederick Sakiss) unaware of the true nature of their relationship. As Greta tries to "cure" Jean, both of their partners become jealous and manipulative, eventually resorting to blackmail, suicide attempts, and possible murder. Although Pécas' I am a Nymphomaniac is better known, Her and She and Him was actually the director's first more straightforward erotic film after nearly a decade of crime films tinged with eroticism like Heat of Midnight and the duo of erotic melodramas built around Elke Sommer in Daniella by Night and Sweet Violence. Although the dialogue is slightly confused – Greta alternately makes statements like "The whole thing disgusts me" and "It's a big world, there's room for everybody" – Pécas' conservative stance towards sexual liberation in general is particularly regressive here with Claude's lesbianism the result of a traumatic rape that causes her to hate men (including homosexuals as she calls Decas' a pansy and a pederast), the classic possessive, manipulative, and predatory older gays trope in which they are simultaneously deviant and pitiable, while Greta and Jean are "rescued from a bad situation into something even worse." Greta and Mathias are certainly manipulative and predatory, but Greta herself does not come across that well either. Just as Claude says of Greta that "we're so beautiful together," Greta is attracted to Jean before she even speaks to him and takes advantage of Mathias being away to put the moves on Jean, promising to "cure" him (one scene shot for the film but only included in the U.S. version particularly puts her in a bad light when Jean is hesitant to get a hand job under a cafe table). At first Jean seems self-assured about being gay when he is with Mathias but confesses to Greta that his homosexuality is the result of impotence after being rejected by an older, married woman and unsuccessful attempts with prostitutes. Claude is regarded as a hopeless case bound for a Swiss asylum where she will be confined but pampered to the end of her days while Mathias will also "never change" (despite being proudly defiant of bigotry and proud to be a gay man capable of inspiring heterosexual lust with his erotic paintings). While Pécas' conservative bent was evident in his subsequent films, it was tempered by a greater desire to entertain even while similarly approaching nymphomania and frigidity as social problems that can be cured by "finding a real man." The scoring of Derry Hall includes a particularly annoying song that underlines the film's stance about staying on the "right side of the road" (thankfully, when the track is recycled in subsequent Pécas films it is only as an instrumental). The film's U.S. distributor was Audubon Films' Radley Metzger who managed to work in more nuanced depictions of homosexuality and bisexuality in works like Therese and Isabelle, The Image, and even the farcical Score while exhibiting a superior visual flair to Pécas. 
Video
Originally produced as "Les liaisons particulières" and released as "Claude et Greta", Her and She and Him got its better-known title when released in the United States by Audubon Films. The original length of the film was just over ninety-two minutes while the French release version ran eighty-six minutes. The U.S. version ran ninety minutes, losing a bit of footage from the French release version but also adding some X-rated inserts (see below) as well as incorporating some dialogue scenes shot for the film but not used in the French versions. The U.S. version was released on tape stateside on VHS by First Run Features while the "Claude et Greta" version turned up in Spain as part of a Pécas set and then in France on DVD in 2013 while the longer "Les liaisons particulières" version first turned up in France on Blu-ray last year and the master has been ported over here. Like 88 Films' Blu-ray of I am Frigid… Why?, Her and She and Him's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.66:1 widescreen Blu-ray is a newer transfer, and it is the longer cut with the "Les liaisons particulières" title card and French censorship classification under the title (which was missing from the "Claude et Greta" titles), with a consistently crisp and colorful look. The look cinematographer Robert Lefebvre developed for Pécas' later films is in more embryonic form here with some canted angles and light use of on-camera filters while the pink gel lighting he used in other films is replaced here with deep red gels that "heat up" a couple sexual encounters that are more chaste in the French cut of the film. A fine emulsion scratch is evident in a couple shots but the materials seem to have been in better condition than some of the rights owner's French erotic titles. 
Audio
Audio options include English and French LPCM 2.0 mono tracks. The English track reverts to French with English subtitles for one three minute scene and a few other shorter instances, none of which are erotic as the viewer will discover that the English version was more explicit. The English track sounds a bit more vibrant than the French but both are listenable. A full optional English subtitle track is available for the French track, which reveals some differences in the way both tracks pathologize the sexuality of the characters as well as some other touches (in the French track, a character addresses Greta by her surname "Göteborg" and more playfully as "Garbo" on the English).
Extras
Extras include "Let's Calm Down... and Talk About Max Pécas" (30:04), an interview with French film historian Christophe Bier – who has appeared on various French releases of exploitation films but this piece seems to have been conducted by Eugenio Ercolani specifically for this edition – in which he provides an overview of Pécas' career starting with his better-known (in France) productions of the last decade of his career in light youth-oriented beach comedies set in St. Tropez for a wide audience before going back to his early days on the business side of the theatre, becoming an assistant director for various directors at the studio of Marcel Pagnol before making his own first attempts at directing coinciding with the French New Wave but only sharing with them economic approaches to filmmaking on a low budget. Bier discusses Pécas's early crime titles and his run-ins with censors, his realization that international success was with eroticism and the string of action and crime erotic films of the sixties – along with preparing dual versions to cater to the tastes of different markets – which started to look old-fashioned by the late sixties with Scandinavian erotic films removing the necessity of a genre plot to strip down actresses. Bier then discusses how Pécas approaches sexuality and sexual liberation as "social problems" in his trilogy, noting the particularly retrograde elements of Her and She and Him while admitting his fondness for them and suggesting they be enjoyed in the context of kitsch. Bier also discusses the concurrent work of José Bénazéraf (Naked Sex) who regarded himself as an auteur while Pécas described himself as a craftsman, as well as discussing the lesser-seen Masscare of Pleasure credited to "Jean-Loup Grosdard" but actually written and directed by French crime writer Jean-Pierre Bastid, the satirical nature of which lead Pécas to look to Bastid to script La main noire for him.  Also commissioned by Ercolani is "Max Pécas' Grave" (1:47), a similar piece to the visit to the graves of Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin on the 88 Films' Blu-ray of Seven Deaths in the Cat's Eye. The aforementioned additional scenes from the U.S. version (19:20) are shown in context including adding a vibrator and male partner to Greta's photo shoot, body double inserts to the lesbian scenes with Claude, more inserts to Greta's sex scenes with Jean, while Greta's description of sexual freedom in Sweden is illustrated with cutaways to blurred but obviously hardcore sex scenes possibly cribbed from a Scandinavian import. In addition to these inserts, Audubon also availed itself of scenes shot for the film but not used in the French version including a sequence in which Greta confides her suspicions about Jean's homosexuality to an older man who picks her up ("I certainly can't rape him") as well as a bit of extended post-coital conversation between Greta and Jean. The disc also includes the U.S. theatrical trailer (2:00), the alternate "Claude et Greta" French title sequence (1:56), and an image gallery (0:42). 
Packaging
The disc comes with a reversible cover featuring original and newly-commissioned artwork by Joel Robinson.
Overall
Her and She and Him certainly is a "motion picture deviation" but whether it is regressive or kitschy is a matter for the viewer.
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