‘The Coming of Sin’ or — Kinky Art or Artsy Kink?

Jose Larraz’s ‘The Coming of Sin’ (1978) is an interesting film although, again, that depends on how you define the word “interesting”.

It tells the story of Triana, a young gypsy girl, who comes to stay in the secluded chateau of Lorna, a beautiful artist. It’s not long before the two begin a passionate and erotic romance, yet the two lovers are persistently pestered by a naked man on horseback. Triana seems to think he represents their doom and is consistently having sexually-charged nightmares about this mysterious stranger on his steed. However, Lorna isn’t quite so sure and decides it could be a good idea to get the three of them together, get drunk and fool around a bit. After all, what’s the worst that could happen?

‘The Coming of Sin’ is straight up Euro-erotica with, once again, Larraz sharing similar artsy/titillation territory to Walerian Borowczyk except Larraz’s film has a plot so flimsy that it’s easy to miss that the movie actually has one until the closing minutes when it all feels a little too late. It has hardly any action, almost zero violence and the sleaze is relatively restrained, so this film could disappoint the hardcore exploitation fan. Seriously, there is hardly anything of impact going on here.

Yet what Larraz manages to do, and do extremely well, is to create a genuinely dream-like atmosphere which gives the movie an idiosyncratic quality throughout. Soft-focus cinematography combined with interesting compositions, a striking colour palette (Larraz likes his splashes of blues at night) and some very nice camera-moves means that’s there’s always something for the eye to latch onto. For example, there’s a crane shot at one point involving a man washing at a stream along with his horse that was either caught by pure chance or (relatively) elaborately orchestrated.

The Spanish setting also adds to the flavour of proceedings with roses punctuating the dark of night and the most erotic scene in the movie, by far, being a flamenco dance that is transfixing and exhilarating to watch. And notice how the sound of the stamping of feet and clapping of hands cuts to the percussive splashing of rain; there’s some very nice sound-work going on here.

‘The Coming of Sin’ is an archetypal example of soft-core erotica for which the only defence is “It’s nicely shot.” But if atmosphere is your bag then this is certainly worth throwing the saddle off and having a bare-back ride on for 90 minutes.

One last point — in the UK the film was heavily cut and renamed ‘The Violation of The Bitch’ which is kinda interesting as that title is way more provocative and sleazy than anything that actually happens in the movie itself, censored or not.