Mondo Celluloid - Review » AVERE VENT’ANNI / TO BE TWENTY (Eli Roth, Part III)

AVERE VENT’ANNI / TO BE TWENTY (Eli Roth, Part III)

TEN REASONS YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A 70′S SEXPLOITATION EPIC

1. Your film is called AVERE VENT’ANNI (TO BE TWENTY), and your heroines are two scantily clad teenaged girls, one of whom kind of looks like Tanya Roberts as a Xanadu muse, who are hitchhiking across Europe to “get laid.”

2. Within minutes of the film’s opening, both heroines walk into a bistro and, without provocation from or warning to the locals, break into an extended dance to a funky disco anthem, their shirts barely containing their what?, me wear a bra? cleavage. This fantastically cheesy song, with its kiss me kiss me kiss me kiss me kiss me kiss me one more time lyrics, will essentially become a third character, rearing its ugly face every time these girls get laid.

3. Cut to both girls being attacked and stripped naked in the woods…

4. …only to escape and proceed on their journey to a bouncy 70’s score, still in search of sex, but now also in search of a place called the Temple of Tranquility.

5. Despite the fact that these women repeatedly proclaim their quest for sex, flirt with everything that moves, and frequently expose their nipples as their shirts become increasingly revealing, they respond to every come-on from every guy in the film with disgust, slapping hands away and trading barbs and generally taking a “Hey watch it, creep!” attitude towards most the male species in general (though they do express interest in – and essentially molest – a passed out guy).

6. You get witty exchanges like “You know D.H. Lawrence?” “Yeah, he was Lady Chatterly’s Lover!” “Very good! You ever hear of the Sex Revolution?” “Ever hear of it? I invented it!”

7. There’s a mime. His name is Coco. He’s big into a concept called astral death. Oh, and he’s a voyeur. When our girls finally do have sex, our mime gets to watch what amounts to a seemingly choreographed dosey-do of on-their-feet kissing with two naked boys, followed by an incredibly humdrum orgy. Our mine watches intently while making interpretive hand movements, so disturbing the young men that they stop midway through their lame sex, pissing off the girls and causing one to hurl the wonderful insult, “These guys are about as exciting as a McDonald’s cheeseburger!”

8. Every man over 30 is utter putty in the hands of these ultra-70’s bimbos. There’s a dude who looks like Donald Pleasance who is so helpless to the cruel seduction of feathered hair that he’s tricked into believing that his use of the word culture turns one of our women on, so much so that he repeats the word culture about twenty times as our brunette opens her shirt and shorts, feeling herself up and ultimately squeezing money out of the poor sap.

9. We get some dialogue about how “the youth of today has rejected the cornerstones of society.” (…that’s a quote…) This followed by our heroines dancing down the street in Daisy Dukes for two full minutes, humbling those of us who still defend the 1970’s.

10. …your film ends abruptly, with your girls once again out to hitch a ride, and you find out – after sitting through this mind-numbing miasma of leering men and awkwardly coquettish disco tramps – that you’ve just watched the heavily-edited American version of what is essentially yet another European Last House on the Left rip-off, with a savagely brutal climax nowhere to be found in the poorly-dubbed cut you paid $5 to watch and review. You kick yourself for not looking this up before. And you thank every band from Television to The Ramones to Joy Division to The Smiths for laying waste to disco.