Watch Madame and Her Niece For Free

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Based on the novel 'Yvette' by Guy de Maupassant, this early example of German Sexploitation is very tame by today's standards. In fact, it plays out exactly like one of those pocket books teenage girls swoon over: Yvette (Edwige Fenech with her stunning black hair and late Sixties Egyptian style make-up) is a successful, sexy fashion model, yet despite living in what seems to be a very sexually active hippie commune, she remains absolutely chaste until she's met the right man.On the other hand, her mother Michelle De Winter (Ruth-Maria Kubitschek) is a gold digger praying on wealthy men in order to keep up her exuberantly rich life style. Michelle even goes as far as to pretend Yvette is her niece instead of her daughter, hence the title. Funnily enough, this charade doesn't quite hold up in the Italian version of the title, "Mia Nipote, La Vergine" since Nipote can mean both niece as well as granddaughter.Fred Williams plays Peter von Hallstein, son of a prominent Bruce Wayne type millionaire playboy and like his father he enjoys getting massaged by the indoor pool and wearing tuxedo's. When Yvette falls for Peter like a ton of bricks, she asks the very hands on 'father figure' Dr. Fink (Karl Walter Diess) for advice instead of her mother, which of course leads to all sorts of misunderstandings and problems.Along the way we get to see a lot of groovy and hip Sixties fashions being photographed, being flaunted in discotheques and being taken off at wild pool parties (compete with inflatable chairs and those silly silver orbs floating around). The reason why all these pool parties occur indoors is because the entire film is set in winter. Dr. Fink's not so cunning plans continuously backfire on Peter and almost end in disaster when Michelle begins to take a liking to the young man. Eventually the good doctor has to get an entire hospital to play along with one of his schemes in order to bring the young couple back together.The version commented on here had quite a few scenes missing and only ran a brief 62 minutes. Therefore it is possible that the full version has some more depth to it. A more likely scenario however is that the longer version has a bit more nudity. Though the sight of young Edwige in a white see-through shirt at one of the rowdy parties would be enough for any red-blooded male.7 out of 10