Moment of Truth: A Barely SFW Chat With Argentine Sex Goddess (and New Doc Star) Isabel Sarli

Welcome back to Moment of Truth, Movieline's spotlight on the best in nonfiction cinema. Today we hear from legendary Argentine movie star Isabel Sarli, the subject of a new documentary having its U.S. premiere this weekend in New York.

It's not every day you see a retrospective honoring Isabel "Coca" Sarli, the Argentine siren whose work with director (and eventual husband) Armando Bo resulted in one of the most prolific, searing and sensational partnerships of the 1960s and '70s. In fact, it's not really ever that you see such an event in the U.S. -- at least not until now.

Starting Friday, the Film Society of Lincoln Center will present the weekend-long series Fuego: The Films of Isabel "Coca" Sarli, a collection of five Sarli classics (Fire, Fever, Flesh, The Virgin Goddess, and The Female: 70 × 7) supplemented by the new documentary Carne Sobre Carne. Critic Diego Curubeto's film revisits the most scandalous episodes of Sarli and Bo's careers, in which their impressionistic, playful, sublimely political and often clothes-allergic exploitation romps met the resistance of international censors head on. (The actress was the first to appear completely nude in an Argentine film.) Sarli herself drops in to comment on restored clips from numerous films (Bo died in 1981), while animated interludes and comic reenactments reprise other key moments from the pair's legacy.

It's truly rare material collected for an even rarer, highly recommended occasion, prompting Movieline to reach out to Sarli, now 75, via e-mail with a few questions.

This documentary is kind of spirited and chaotic, not unlike your films. What are your impressions of Curubeto's movie?

The most interesting is that thanks to Curubeto's movie, we were able to save all the censored outtakes. I don't think that my films are chaotic.

Can you describe the process of making this documentary? What did you learn or remember or cherish or regret (if anything) from looking back at this era of your work?

Today, I can say that we triumphed. Journalists at that time considered the films scandalous, while today they are cult films. I don't regret anything. My films spanned three generations: the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. The process of making the documentary with the censored outtakes took six years because we had to clean and restore the negatives.

As you kept battling international censors over sex, nudity, homosexuality and more, to what extent (if at all) did you feel like you and Armando Bo were changing or advancing cinema?

In the US in the 1960s, Swedish films were premiered like I Am Curious Yellow, etc. The audience started to enjoy these films. The censorship in our country was basically by the military dictatorship and the church.

What did you think of the animated, nude version of you attacking the censor in the beginning? Was that kind of revenge ever something you fantasized about doing?

I love it because censors were cretins. It is a good representation.

What do you think of Diego's animated vision of you as a whole?

It is OK. But I don't identify with it.

You say in the film that Armando wanted to tell "real-life stories," but I'm not sure where how the inclusion of things like animal sex or bestiality fits into that rubric. Can you elaborate on that at all?

The scene you are referring to, from the film Fever, was shot on a horse farm, and they told Armando that the daughter of the farm's administrator used to get excited with the horses. The plot was based on real stories.

I loved the insights into Armando's filmmaking process, but I never understood why he always insisted on placing you and his other actors in such danger: fights, beatings, arrow attacks, ant attacks, rape scenes, etc. Assuming he wanted something real, how often did you feel like you were in actual peril?

Armando wanted the scenes to be real. The scene with the ants was shot at a time when workers in the fields were mistreated and earned miserable wages. I was in danger several times, on many occasions. Mostly in southern Argentina, where I had to swim in the frozen lakes in the middle of the winter. When they would fish me out, I had fainted and lost consciousness. I could hardly be revived.

Apart from not doing nudity in The Female: 70 × 7, can you describe any times when you declined to subject yourself to certain scenarios on the set?

Armando was considered a commercial director. On the other hand, [director Leopoldo] Torre Nilson was considered an intellectual. That was the reason why I refused to do a nude scene. Everybody told me that I had to do a film with a director of higher caliber. The film represented Argentina at the Cannes Film Festival. The film was sold to the United States, to a company called "CAMBIST FILM." They dubbed it into English and added nude scenes with another woman pretending to be me. They premiered it with the name The Female. When I saw it, I wanted to die of fright. I hired an American lawyer who, after taking a lot of money from me, told me that he couldn't do anything. The response was, "The nude scenes did not affect my good name or honor because I continued filming and doing nude scenes."

Why did Armando like to film you in and around water so often?

It was a way of doing classic nude scenes that people enjoyed. He thought that if I didn't bathe in the movies, my audience would be disappointed. I bathed in different parts of the world: from the Indian Ocean to the Pilcomayo River with piranhas. In that location, soldiers had to dynamite the river [in order to clear the piranhas away].

Your Virgin Goddess director Dirk De Villiers called much of your preceding work "porn movies." You address this a bit in the film, but can you elaborate a little more on your objection to his comments?

It was during apartheid, in the year 1973. The film's main actor, who was black, couldn't even go into the hotel lobby to buy cigarettes. I defended him in many arguments with Dirk De Villiers, who was a dictatorial cretin. That's why he slandered me. Columbia Pictures never thought of me as a pornographic actress [or they never would not have made the film with me].

What WOULD you call your genre?

My films have beautiful landscapes, music and some sex. You can call them whatever you like.

[Many thanks to Daniela Bajar for her translation.]