House of Sleeping Beauties

An elderly man (Vadim Glowna, who also directed and wrote the script), still despondent after his wife apparently committed suicide many years ago, is told by his friend (Maximilian Schell) of an intriguing house. Beautiful young women, naked and sleeping, are his for the night to do with almost anything he wishes. The woman who checks him in (Angela Winkler) tells him little, other than his privacy will be respected and they request the same of him. At first he is nervous and unsure. He goes several times and each time sees a new girl, whom he at first looks at, then is emboldened to fondle and kiss. He even tries waking them up to no avail.

Increasingly he gets more curious about this setup and bit by bit begins breaking the rules, which rankles the lady of the house. He starts to wonder what would happen if he chanced upon a girl in the outside world.

If you can get past the disturbing ideas of voyeurism, pornography, and exploitation, there is an underlying theme of loneliness and despair in the main character. In the scenes with the girls, he eventually voices his sadness about not understanding his wife's death, as well as his wonderment of the house and these women. The girls become surrogates meant to help him cope, and are an embodiment of the wife as well as his daughter who had also died (which too is quite a disturbing concept). It kind of gets talky and awkward since in the room he voices out loud his despair and thoughts of suicide to the sleeping girls without someone to respond.

This story is based on a Japanese novel, and I think this would have worked much better as a Japanese film. The voyeurism would have felt more artistic than lurid, especially since these girls are always posing and moaning suggestively, and quite pubescent looking.