Lena, a nubile young lass, has been seeing an older man behind the back of her young boyfriend Jan. When she tells Jan, he rewards her with a good few smacks around the chops and she flees town. Lena hitches a lift with with a middle-aged businessman, who parks down a side road and rapes her. But this turns out to be an idle fantasy of Lenas, and when the man drops her off she is picked up by a male/female couple of swingers who she takes to her boyfriend's mother's cabin in the woods. The three of them share an idyll there, broken only by another fantasy of Lena's that the woman is murderously jealous of her, and late at night she watches them making love on the living room floor.
The next day Jan appears and, after a car chase (which ends with a fantasy from Lena of she & the couple burning to death), Jan drags his errant girlfriend back to the town. There she confesses that the older man, Helge, has been blackmailing her into taking part in orgies because he has some nudie pictures of her. Helge is violent and obsessed with Lena, and the middle section of the film is split between the girl getting lovey-dovey with Jan and being stalked by the menacing Helge. Eventually Lena runs away from Jan when his mother discovers the nudie shots (calling her a whore) & is followed home by the stalking Helge. He gets into the house and, in a particularly creepy and uncomfortable scene, ties her to the bed (with her collusion), cuts off her dress and has sex with her. She gets an arm free and uses the knife to stab her lover/assailant in the back. There follows an extraordinary shot in which she remains tied up (by both hands) with his stabbed corpse lying on top of her. The next day, Lena's mother arrives back from holiday. Helge has gone and Lena is taken shopping for a new dress. She meets Jan and all seems okay, but for the fact that Lena is still thinking about seeing Helge. There is some question by now as to whether Helge actually exists or whether he's another fantasy of Lena's.
Exposed is intriguing because it suggests that Lena's sexuality is a complex and messy state of affairs, and that there is no longer the surety that she would prefer to be in a "normal" relationship with a bland ordinary bloke - perhaps her sexual life runs to more exotic and dangerous pursuits? Or perhaps Helge is a fantasy of the predatory male gaze which will always follow her, thinking about coercion, submission and violence? There's no ground for the definite to exist in Lena's life, torn as she is between a bland reality and a sadistic world of fantasy which is itself potentially true.
Lena's story takes place in nicely furnished but faceless rooms (sometimes when Lena is alone in her bedroom, the visuals are reminiscent of Munch) or what Deleuze would call "any-space-whatevers": shopping precincts, streets, petrol stations and stairwells. This is a world which is meaningless but for a series of impulses, be they normalising or sexually deviant. Lena has no definite self, she is a series of reactions or acquiescences to the desires of the men in her life, which might or might not be her desires. In the end, though a lot of flesh has been exposed in the film, the self is as opaque as it was before any camera was pointed at it.
Christina Lindberg's affectless face has rarely been better used than in the role of the nullity, Lena. The character confesses that "I feel too little and know too much" and in the world of experience that the film exposes, Lena is not alone in her lack of feeling: as she and her mother walk as typical consumers along the commercial streets of the town, they pass a sex-shop district with windows displaying the same kind of pictures that Lena might have posed for; she asks her mother what she thinks of them, and the mother replies "soon everything will be like that; nobody will feel anything any more." In its modest way, Exposed is a prophecy of a world which was, as the sexual revolution ended, just being born: a world of impulse and craving, the vain search for satisfaction, boring conformism or soulless promiscuity and kicks.
Scored with a haunting, harmonica-led theme tune and filmed in stark realist colours, Exposed deserves to have a higher reputation.
The next day Jan appears and, after a car chase (which ends with a fantasy from Lena of she & the couple burning to death), Jan drags his errant girlfriend back to the town. There she confesses that the older man, Helge, has been blackmailing her into taking part in orgies because he has some nudie pictures of her. Helge is violent and obsessed with Lena, and the middle section of the film is split between the girl getting lovey-dovey with Jan and being stalked by the menacing Helge. Eventually Lena runs away from Jan when his mother discovers the nudie shots (calling her a whore) & is followed home by the stalking Helge. He gets into the house and, in a particularly creepy and uncomfortable scene, ties her to the bed (with her collusion), cuts off her dress and has sex with her. She gets an arm free and uses the knife to stab her lover/assailant in the back. There follows an extraordinary shot in which she remains tied up (by both hands) with his stabbed corpse lying on top of her. The next day, Lena's mother arrives back from holiday. Helge has gone and Lena is taken shopping for a new dress. She meets Jan and all seems okay, but for the fact that Lena is still thinking about seeing Helge. There is some question by now as to whether Helge actually exists or whether he's another fantasy of Lena's.
Exposed is intriguing because it suggests that Lena's sexuality is a complex and messy state of affairs, and that there is no longer the surety that she would prefer to be in a "normal" relationship with a bland ordinary bloke - perhaps her sexual life runs to more exotic and dangerous pursuits? Or perhaps Helge is a fantasy of the predatory male gaze which will always follow her, thinking about coercion, submission and violence? There's no ground for the definite to exist in Lena's life, torn as she is between a bland reality and a sadistic world of fantasy which is itself potentially true.
Lena's story takes place in nicely furnished but faceless rooms (sometimes when Lena is alone in her bedroom, the visuals are reminiscent of Munch) or what Deleuze would call "any-space-whatevers": shopping precincts, streets, petrol stations and stairwells. This is a world which is meaningless but for a series of impulses, be they normalising or sexually deviant. Lena has no definite self, she is a series of reactions or acquiescences to the desires of the men in her life, which might or might not be her desires. In the end, though a lot of flesh has been exposed in the film, the self is as opaque as it was before any camera was pointed at it.
Christina Lindberg's affectless face has rarely been better used than in the role of the nullity, Lena. The character confesses that "I feel too little and know too much" and in the world of experience that the film exposes, Lena is not alone in her lack of feeling: as she and her mother walk as typical consumers along the commercial streets of the town, they pass a sex-shop district with windows displaying the same kind of pictures that Lena might have posed for; she asks her mother what she thinks of them, and the mother replies "soon everything will be like that; nobody will feel anything any more." In its modest way, Exposed is a prophecy of a world which was, as the sexual revolution ended, just being born: a world of impulse and craving, the vain search for satisfaction, boring conformism or soulless promiscuity and kicks.
Scored with a haunting, harmonica-led theme tune and filmed in stark realist colours, Exposed deserves to have a higher reputation.
