Don't Change Hands

Director: Paul Vecchiali

1975 / 82min / 4K DCP

The same year that Vecchiali acted as producer on Liliane de Kermadec’s Aloïse, she returned the favor by playing the same role on Vecchiali’s downright unclassifiable Don’t Change Hands. After receiving a reel of a dirty movie prominently featuring her estranged son, a well-to-do politician taps a lesbian private eye, Mélinda (Myriam Mézières), to investigate the source of the incriminating material, leading our intrepid heroine to Shanghai Lily, a den of vice where the orgies never stop and the double-crosses don’t either. A playful high-style mash-up of spy film and hard-boiled tropes—the labyrinthine plot is enough to give Raymond Chandler a headache—with skin flick sizzle, adjudged “good porn” by no less an authority than legendary critic Serge Daney.

Distributor: AGFA

Restoration by Severin Films

Part of Liliane de Kermadec: The Price of Freedom