Private Lessons (1981) Jensen Farley/Comedy RT: 87 minutes Rated R (language, nudity, strong sexual content) Director: Alan Myerson Screenplay: Dan Greenburg Music: Willie Nile Cinematography: Jan de Bont Release date: August 26, 1981 (US) Cast: Sylvia Kristel, Howard Hesseman, Eric Brown, Patrick Piccininni, Meredith Baer, Pamela Bryant, Ed Begley Jr., Ron Foster, Dan Barrows. Box Office: $26.2M (US)
Rating: ***
During my hormonally misspent youth, Private Lessons was the Holy Grail of R-rated horny teenager movies. The parental units would not allow me to see at the movies or watch it on cable. No matter what I tried, they always caught me and turned it off. One time, my friend stayed overnight and we snuck downstairs at 3am to watch it, but my father came downstairs about an hour into it and sent us back upstairs. Finally, one of my friends got a VCR (a luxury in 1984) and I went over to his house to watch it (along with The Warriors and 1990: The Bronx Warriors). Was it worth all the trouble and fuss?
While not exactly a life-changing experience, Private Lessons is an amusing little comedy with an admittedly sleazy premise. When his father goes away on a three-week business trip, Philly (Brown, Mama’s Family) finds himself home alone with the sexy French maid Nicole (Kristel, Emmanuelle). She catches him peeping into her bedroom with a pair of binoculars and invites him to watch her get undressed. Sweet! A bit later, she invites him to take a bath with her. Yes! Long story short, they sleep together. Jackpot! It’s a teenage boy’s wet dream come true.
What Philly doesn’t know is that the family chauffeur Lester (Hesseman, WKRP in Cincinnati) has blackmailed Nicole into helping him extort $10,000 from the family. If she doesn’t participate in his crooked scheme, he will report her to Immigration. Nicole fakes her own death by heart attack while engaged in intercourse with Philly. The boy freaks out and runs to Lester for help. They bury the “body” in the yard. Philly thinks that’s the end of it. It’s not.
The next day, the “body” is gone. There’s an anonymous note demanding $10,000 in exchange for the body’s return; otherwise, the police will find out about everything. Philly steals the money from his father’s safe and pays up as per the note’s instructions. However, Nicole decides to come clean and tell Philly everything. She’s fallen in love with him and wants to tell him about Lester’s scheme. Together, they concoct a plan to get even with Lester and take back the money. Philly’s tennis instructor Jack Travis (Begley, Get Crazy) helps them by posing as an aggressive police detective looking for Nicole.
I realize I’ve told you most of what happens in Private Lessons, but let’s face it, who really cares about the outcome of some dopey blackmail/extortion subplot? The filmmakers needed something to fill 87 minutes so why not have the sleazy chauffer try to extort money from Philly. It’s just as good as anything else the screenwriters could have come up.
The outcome is a foregone conclusion, but what about Nicole and Philly? Are they going to finish what they started earlier in the movie? Damn that coitus interruptus! That’s also a foregone conclusion. It’s a horny teenager movie, what do you expect? I call Private Lessons a horny teenager movie, but it’s nothing like Porky’s or Spring Break. For one thing, the teenagers don’t behave like complete degenerates. Philly and his corpulent best friend Sherman (Piccininni) are simply curious teenage boys driven by their overactive hormones. They talk about sex non-stop and try to peek through windows to see naked women. They don’t hide in locker rooms or stick their penises through holes in the shower room wall.
I’m tempted to say that Private Lessons is a sweet movie, but the premise itself is actually pretty sleazy. Philly is 15 and Nicole is 30, that’s illegal! But, for some reason, nobody in the movie seems to object to their relationship. At one point, Sherman’s older sister Joyce (Bryant) spots them together in a movie theater and just raises her eyebrows a bit. If the genders were reversed- 15YO girl and 30YO guy- the movie would no longer be a comedy, it would be one of those shocking dramas made to warn teenagers of the many dangers of the real world (drugs, alcohol, child molesters). It’s an interesting double standard, but I don’t think the filmmakers meant to offend people or start a controversy. That would be attributing too much significance to Private Lessons. It’s just a softcore teen sex fantasy meant to attract legions of teenage boys into the theater. With a gross of $26.2M, it looks like a lot of teenage boys took the bait.
I enjoy Private Lessons very much. It’s an appealing little comedy featuring a believable character in an unbelievable situation. Brown does a great job as Philly. He reacts to Nicole’s advances just like any normal, inexperienced teenage boy. He wears boxer shorts when he takes a bath with her and bolts from the tub when she touches his private parts. He also gets it into his head to propose marriage to her before their first attempt at intercourse and gets upset when she laughs at him.
Sylvia Kristel, what can I say? She’s sexy, graceful and delicate. She has a great body and can’t act worth a damn. It’s a good thing the audience for Private Lessons doesn’t care whether or not the actors turn in brilliant performances. The only thing that matters is how hot the lead actress looks sans clothing. Out of a possible 10, Kristel rates an 11. Hesseman looks like he’s having a ball playing the mean chauffeur. He makes a great villain. Piccininni provides great comic relief as the goofball best friend with a dirty little mind.
While definitely a product of the early 80s, Private Lessons is a pleasant and enjoyable little movie with an awesome soundtrack that includes tunes from Rod Stewart, Earth, Wind and Fire, Air Supply, Eric Clapton and Randy Van Warmer. Think of it as a cinematic time capsule in which the viewer will find a more innocent (and more innocuous) view of teenagers and sex.
