Film
The Lickerish Quartet
A 1970 Italian film where a wealthy family's sexual fantasies begin to unravel when they invite a woman they mistake for a porn actress to their castle. It's a baroque, deliberately artificial chamber piece—less interested in realism than in exploring desire, performance, and the gap between fantasy and flesh. For admirers of Visconti's decadence and mid-century European erotica.
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Theorem1968
Pasolini's masterpiece uses a mysterious visitor to expose the rot beneath a bourgeois family's surface. Like Lickerish Quartet, it's a formal experiment in seduction, class, and the masks we wear.
But Deliberately enigmatic and slow-paced; Pasolini's intent is philosophical rather than erotic, which some find remote.
Belle de Jour1967
Buñuel's study of a woman's secret double life mirrors Lickerish Quartet's fascination with fantasy colliding with reality. Both are stylish, perverse, and genuinely unsettling.
But It's a dream-logic puzzle that refuses easy interpretation; some find it frustratingly opaque.
The Swimming Pool1969
Bourgeois decadence, sexual tension, and a catalyst stranger—this French film shares Lickerish Quartet's mood of languid eroticism and moral corruption. Alain Delon is hypnotic.
But The pacing is glacial and the plot is slight; it's mood over momentum, which can feel hollow.
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The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
Contempt1963
Both use the presence of a desirable woman to interrogate the gaze of others and the gap between who someone is and who people need them to be.
Godard's film-within-a-film is about desire and performance, with Brigitte Bardot as the object everyone misreads. Like Lickerish Quartet, it asks who the real fantasy is—and for whom.
But It's a Godard essay dressed as a movie. If you want plot momentum, his self-conscious digressions will infuriate you.
More like this (8)
L'Avventura1960
Antonioni's masterwork has the same aristocratic European atmosphere and obsession with surfaces masking emptiness. A woman vanishes; what remains is ennui and desire.
But Nearly three hours of deliberately flat affect and ambiguous endings; if you want catharsis, this will frustrate you.
Senso1954
Visconti's sumptuous film about obsession and class collision features extraordinary production design and a woman undone by passion. It's operatic where Lickerish Quartet is chamber-like, but the DNA is identical.
But The Technicolor is almost garish by modern standards; the romantic lead is deliberately weak and unsympathetic.
Blow-Up1966
Antonioni again, but here the obsession is visual—a photographer becomes convinced he's witnessed something illicit. It captures the same '60s alienation and the unreliability of perception.
But The plot dissolves into abstraction; viewers hoping for a tidy mystery will leave angry.
The Skin1981
Cavani's study of desire and power during the Allied occupation of Italy. Like Lickerish Quartet, it's unashamed about sexuality as a mirror of corruption and class struggle.
But Graphically sexual and deeply bleak; it's not titillating, it's punitive. Burt Lancaster looks increasingly ravaged.
Suspiria1977
Argento's giallo masterpiece uses baroque artificiality and unsettling beauty—a visual language closer to opera than naturalism. It shares Lickerish Quartet's willingness to sacrifice realism for atmosphere.
But It's a horror film with a gossamer plot. If you need character development or logic, you'll feel cheated.
Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom1976
Pasolini's final film is a deliberate provocation about power, desire, and degradation. It's the logical extreme of what Lickerish Quartet is playfully exploring: sex as cruelty and control.
But It's explicitly graphic, deeply misanthropic, and honestly one of the most difficult films ever made. Not recommended for most evenings.
Mulholland Drive2001
Both are structured as dreams where logic keeps breaking down. Both concern people who are not what they seem and desire that destroys those who pursue it.
Lynch's labyrinth about Hollywood, identity, and the stories we tell ourselves to survive. It's a century later and a continent away, but it's still about fantasy devouring reality.
But It's deliberately fractured and requires serious engagement. Casual viewing doesn't work; you have to surrender or become frustrated.
Godard's Passion1982
Both treat cinema as pure artifice—layers of performance, image, and desire with no bedrock reality beneath. Both ask what happens when people mistake projection for substance.
Godard's late work about filmmaking and eroticism, with a plot constructed like a painting by Delacroix. It's formal, baffling, genuinely erotic, and absolutely unique—as strange as Lickerish Quartet but wilder.
But It feels like watching someone's fever dream. Narrative is scorched earth; you must be willing to surrender conventional storytelling entirely.
People
Cast
Silvana VenturelliVisitor
Frank WolffCastle Owner
Erika RembergWife
Paolo TurcoSon- Karl-Otto Alberty(uncredited)
Angelo BoscariolSoldier (uncredited)
Annie Carol EdelWoman in Stag Movie (uncredited)- Paolo RosaniMan in Stag Movie (uncredited)
Directing
- Leonardo ScavinoAssistant Director
- Radley MetzgerDirector
Writing
- Michael DeForrestScreenplay
- Michael DeForrestStory
- Radley MetzgerStory
Production
- Radley MetzgerProducer
- Mario MarianiProduction Manager