THE APE WOMAN

Description

THE APE WOMAN is the highest-praised film by Marco Ferreri, the over-the-top iconoclastic director known for ‘La Grande Bouffe’. His signature edgy exploration of the grotesque was revered by the Cannes Festival who awarded many of his works.

Famously irreverent, Ferreri was so off-beat and scathing as an author implacably dissecting our societal mores in all his masterful films, that he was labelled ‘dangerous’! The film is inspired by a true story of the nihilistically cruel exploitation of a young carnival performer, Julia Pastrana, whose body was completely covered in hair.

She is brought to life here by an extraordinary Annie Girardot – France’s highest-paid actress of the time – in a natural measured and elegant performance from which emanates the ambiguous emotion of being alluring yet devastatingly poignant as ‘the ape woman’.

An unscrupulous hustler (a magnificent Ugo Tognazzi) discovers the young woman in a convent and marries her in order to get her on the freak-show circuit and cash in on the distinctive appearance of her body and face covered in hairs.

This world 1^st ever Blu-ray shows all versions of the film, recently restored in 4K for the Venice Film Festival, finally doing justice to the previously condemned film. First is Ferreri’s own edit now complete and uncut. And 2^nd, the Producer’s longer, upbeat ending version which garnered a Palme D’or nomination at the 1964 Cannes Festival.