Sex Diva (Diva Futura), from writer-director Giulia Louise Steigerwalt, is a drama following the groundbreaking real-life Italian talent agency turned porn studio Diva Futura (future star). Founder Riccardo Schicchi (Pietro Castellitto) began with nude art photography during the free love cultural movement and became legendary. Diva Futura turned models Ilona Staller, known as Cicciolina (Lidija Kordic), and Moana Pozzi (Denise Capezza) into Italian icons.
Sex Diva is presented in chapters on Schicchi, Staller, Pozzi, and other key figures. Opening on the 1994 death of Pozzi, the film then flashes back to Schicchi’s 1950s childhood, where his father encouraged him with nudie magazines and gave him a telescope to spy on female neighbors. To American sensibilities, this seems depraved, but Steigerwalt frames it with a playful innocence. This unabashed hedonism is strangely juxtaposed with the Roman Catholic Church in Italy, or maybe it’s not so odd, all things considered.
Young Riccardo is a little scamp besotted with the idea of naked women. After his male classmates bully him, Riccardo uses his extraordinary charm to surround himself with girls who adore him. When adult Schicchi happens upon gorgeous Ilona Staller, gasoline meets spark in an explosion of passion and art. The rebellion and free love of the 1960s were fertile ground for erotica and Schicchi and Staller took it upon themselves to bring the art of sex into the light.
“…Schicchi and Staller took it upon themselves to bring the art of sex into the light.”
Photography naturally escalated to motion pictures, but Schicchi needed women for films, establishing Diva Futura as a porn talent agency. When Ilona moves on, he finds the even more beautiful Moana Pozzi, who tired of the casting couches, decides that if she has to offer sex to be in the cinema, it will be in porn films she agrees to make. 2As time wears on the women mature into lives with families and interests that go beyond porn. Schicchi never does.
After Pozzi dies, Steigerwalt uses a jarring series of non-linear time jumps to highlight key events throughout Sex Diva. Porn becomes commoditized, and the glory of the art revolution falls away. What follows is more aggressive, unsavory exploitation. Several of the women from Diva Futura later went into serious endeavors. Staller stood as a member of the Italian parliament. Pozzi ran for Mayor of Rome in 1993. Of course, most notably, Attanasio became a published writer.
The source of the story is a memoir by Schicchi’s long-time secretary, Debora Attanasio (played by Barbara Ronchi), called Don’t Tell Mom I’m a Secretary. The art of the film is undeniable. The cinematography, soundtrack, and performances are all thrilling, opening a window onto the Italian style of the period. Ronchi anchors the film, while Castellitto plays Schicchi as scattered and impulsive. There is, of course, considerable nudity and sex.
A dry chronicle of these events would result in the conclusion that Schicchi was not so different from Larry Flynt or even Harvey Weinstein, just another greasy exploiter of women. However, Steigerwalt goes out of her way in Sex Diva to paint him as the same pure, wide-eyed little boy who loved women’s bodies with unashamed abandon. He said his erotica was “amoral, but never immoral.” The filmmaker fills the screen with beautiful women who love him, Las Vegas big band jazz, and the art, which he said was more about freedom and cultural awakening than it was about male-gaze horniness. She wants us to see it as sophisticated, sexy fun in a bittersweet rumination about a man who meant well. Perhaps he did. She makes a compelling case, but it’s up to the viewer to judge whether she succeeds.
Learn more at the official Sex Diva (Diva Futura) website.
"…the art of the film is undeniable."
