Playing with Love (1977) (2024)

Popular reviews

• Review by fi🪷 ½ 1

  yes officer.. this movie right here

• Review by matt lynch 1

  Banned in multiple countries, and probably with good cause. Even if this was about adults it would be on the low end of the Eurosleaze spectrum, another tiresome treatise on lost Edenic innocence and the supposedly intrinsic emotional cruelty of love. That stuff's a dime a dozen. But what sets MALADOLESCENZA apart is its illustration of those already stale "ideas" with a trio of actually underage kids psychologically and, yes, sexually torturing each other out in the woods. There can't be any good reason to stage a David Hamilton-style sex scene with a couple of twelve-year-olds, even if it does have a killer soundtrack. Not a lot of shit makes me feel gross, but this did.

• Review by Sheepdog

  I hope the director, producer, and crew of this movie get killed by an army of CSA survivors.

  Minus. Five. Stars.

• Review by Jonas G. ★★★★

  Haunting, yes, poetic, yes, unforgettable, yes - but veering so dangerously close to child pornography I feel like a creep just having it on my computer.

• Review by Jairo Rodríguez ★★ 2

  Si hay una cosa que hemos simplificado, enormemente, con el paso de los años esa es, sin duda alguna, el erotismo. Hay una diferencia abismal y brutal entre la belleza sublime del erotismo y la visceralidad carnal de la pornografía y hay un potencial en la belleza del cuerpo humano - masculino y femenino, en la variedad de los colores, las edades y las formas - que acaban por ligarse, irremediablemente, a lo erótico - con suerte - o a lo pornográfico, dejando fuera una serie de matices que ni siquiera nos atrevemos a nombrar, vaya a ser que se nos juzgue socialmente por el mero hecho de señalar su existencia. Dicho esto, esto es todo lo contrario a un…

• Review by Joe Buck

  In 2011, actress Eva Ionesco, one of the child leads in this movie, made her directorial debut with a film called MY LITTLE PRINCESS, which she also co-wrote. It is an autobiographical account of her fraught relationship with her photographer mother. In reality, from the age of 5 on, Ionesco was often the subject of her mother's photography. The photographs are highly sexualized, often nude and suggestive depictions of her child, passed off as some kind of jive-ass "art" or "social commentary" or something (which I guess wasn't as big a deal in Europe in the sleazy 70s).

  It is a film *about* her exploitation. And it is a difficult watch that is hard to even recommend.

  MALADOLESCENZA is the film *of* her exploitation, many years into it. And it's sickening.

  We should leave this one in the past where it belongs.

• Review by ono ½ 1

  i'll open this by saying i did not watch the film in full for reasons which will become obvious shortly. i found out about the film simply by going through wikipedia's list of banned films, and saw it was banned in the netherlands for supposed child pornography. i was somewhat unconvinced as i had heard of other films being banned for the same thing, e.g the 1979 film "the tin drum", which although has scenes that are disturbing in nature i dont think can really be classified as child pornography. i also saw one of the actresses in the film was also in "tenebrae", one of my favorite movies. my morbid curiosity got the better of me, and i decided…

• Review by TheLiquidKnight ★½

  Weird, disturbing, creepy, and interesting (sometimes). Not a great piece of art, but one worthy of discussion. I think it is earnestly, but crudely, trying to explore an aspect of adolescent psychology. It doesn't always succeed, yet it taps into some universal truths about about cruelty, abuse, hierarchy, and sociopathy. It doesn't do much with those themes, but they are there and up to interpretation.

  The English title, "Playing with Love," is such an odd translation. I don't know much Italian, but I'm pretty sure Maladolescenza means something like 'ill' or 'sick' adolescence, which is much more fitting. The film is more like the origin story of a serial killer than it is anything to do with love or romance.

• Review by ilovehearses

  Fabrizio is a fucking asshole.

• Review by Daniël ★★★

  Having been labeled child pornography through a court ruling in 2010, this is currently the only movie illegal to own in my country. Unjustly so, in my opinion.

  There are explicit scenes with underage actors, yes. No doubt there'll be people who might 'enjoy' such thing. I don't think however, that this movie was made to be 'sexy' or arousing. The story, which follows a hormone-driven, gaslighting teenage boy with his two 12 year old female friends, is in itself already uncomfortable, and definitely not romantic at all. Explicit scenes show up every now and then, but always feel stiff and unnatural. This must have been done deliberately, as they stand out in sharp contrast to the rest of the…

• Review by Matthew Collins

  I often like the give filmmakers the benefit of the doubt when dealing with tough subject matter. I like to think that there's artistry and purpose within where they point the camera, that they have something to say.

  But this is something I cannot get on board with.

  This isn't art. It's exploitation of children. That's the whole point of the film, and I can't believe they got away with it.

• Review by anemone ★★

  despite its negative connotations due to blatant child pornography, plenty of reviewers gave this movie a good rating, calling it 'a must see for cinephiles' and 'a piece of art'. i thought to myself, "yeah. hell yeah. i'm a cinephile. let's watch this fuckin' child porn forest movie." the movie starts innocently enough. just a teenage boy and his pre-teen 'love' interest playing in the forest. they're both ugly as hell and within the first ten minutes there's a panty shot. clearly, it gets worse and worse and then the other girl shows up and it's even WORSE. sure, this movie's a piece of art, but not all art is good. maybe I'm just not observant enough to see the…