Al Cliver acts opposite real life companion Annie Belle in LAURE, a film whose tangled production history included a walkout by Linda Lovelace and the participation of the real Emmanuelle Arsan.
as heroic and liberating, the al- ready liberated nature of the world she leaves behind makes her actions seem curiously point- less. (LAURE’s structure is re- peated, with greater clarity, in Louis-Jacques’ 1979 novel VANNA, wherein Siwah, a city whose inhabitants are notorious for their incestuous behavior, is portrayed as a symbolic, dream- like realm ruled over by the protagonist’s long-lost father.) LAURE, the film, was created in response to producer Ovidio Assonitis’ suggestion that Louis- Jacques try his hand at screen- writing and directing. It is not clear if the novel (which was pub- lished around the time of the film’s release) was written before or after the screenplay, though the inclusion of “Ovidio” among those six individuals “who left me no choice” mentioned in the book’s dedication suggests this was conceived as a work for the screen. An early draft of the screenplay, which focused on the story’s more philosophical
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aspects, was rejected by Assonitis, and a new one placing greater emphasis on sexual activity was substituted (frequent Assonitis col- laborator Sonia Molteni is cred- ited as co-screenwriter, and presumably did much of the ad- ditional writing). Initially, Linda Lovelace and Al Cliver were cast as the eponymous protagonist and her filmmaker lover Nicolas. According to ORDEAL (1980), her obviously unreliable autobiogra- phy, Lovelace agreed to appear in LAURE (which she mistakenly identifies as LAURIE) after read- ing the first screenplay, but re- fused to participate in the added sex scenes. She seems to have felt particularly incensed at be- ing asked to masturbate with a camera lens, a scene that ap- pears in the novel but not the film. According to Assonitis, he fired Lovelace after ten days of shooting and replaced her with Cliver’s partner Annie Belle. But, in ORDEAL, Lovelace implies that, before being fired, she was recast in the smaller role of Professor
Gualtier’s wife Natalie (eventually played by Michelle Starck). She also claims that the unnamed director tried to entice both Lovelace and her husband-to- be into a ménage à quatre with himself and his wife.
Marayat actually does ap- pear in the film—under the name “Emmanuelle Arsan”—as Gualtier’s lover Myrte. Louis- Jacques is credited with co-writ- ing the screenplay, also under the name “Emmanuelle Arsan.” Add- ing to (or, given the circum- stances, perhaps reducing) the confusion, Louis-Jacques de- cided not to take a director credit (which, on this level of reality, meant refusing to have “Emmanuelle Arsan” credited as director), since he believed that those changes made to the screenplay had resulted in some- thing which did not represent his intentions (though the novel, over which he presumably retained control, closely resembles the film and includes virtually all the sex scenes). The direction was
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