Confessions of a Lady Cop (1976)

An Italian sex comedy that wants its cake and eat it too.  On the one hand, Confessions of a Lady Cop (1976) is clearly designed to exploit the physical assets of the lovely Edwige Fenech, who stars in the title role.  There are numerous entirely gratuitous shots of her putting on or taking off her clothes and her ass is frequently grabbed by various sweaty Italian perverts.  Even when she keeps her clothes on, the script contrives to have her bending over for those ass and cleavage shots at regular intervals.  Yet, on the other hand, it seems to want to be seen as some kind of proto-feminist statement, with Fenech's character constantly rebelling against the stereotypical view male colleagues and superiors have of women police officers - assigning them to menial duties, missing persons cases and looking after abandoned children.  Even when she takes on an undercover assignment, it involves her posing as a hooker in order to locate a missing mother who had been working as a prostitute.  Moreover, despite being portrayed as often naive, headstrong and clumsy, she is also allowed a sequence when she is allowed to demonstrate her physical combat skills, single-handedly fighting off a gang of would be sweaty Italian rapists.

To be absolutely fair, Fenech's male colleagues are also portrayed in less than flattering terms, being, in the main, bumbling incompetents.  Her fiancé, also a police officer, in particular, is portrayed as a stereotypical male chauvinist pig, believing that her desire to be a police officer is merely a passing whim and that once she experiences the tough reality of the job, she'll happily settle for reverting to a more stereotypical female role as an obedient wife.  But while Confessions of a Lady Cop does, to its credit, at least try to show that a woman officer can, in fact, be a competent crime solver, it undermines all of this with its constant sexual objectification of the main character and relentless emphasis upon her breasts and backside.  Still, whilst hardly groundbreaking, the film proved to be extremely popular upon its release, spawning two sequels - both starring Fenech.  Its level is mostly that of a British seventies sex comedy, with the same sort of broad humour and performances one would expect from that genre.  It also boasts an animated title sequence, very much in the style of a contemporary kid's cartoon, which culminates with the animated Fenech getting her knockers out.  Which makes you wonder if Italian children's TV of the seventies served up a diet of such cartoons.  Is it any wonder Italian boys all grew up to be sweaty arse grabbers, (as portrayed in the film)?