When the boomers were young, they were youth-obsessed like no other generation. 1971’s Girl Slaves of Morgana Le Fay (Morgane et ses nymphes) captures the febrile insecurity of a generation whose claim to specialness was its own youth, in a story about bright young women, already feeling the years aged only 20, being offered immortality by an ageless vamp.
The opening shot – a young woman naked, surrounded by old women clothed, some sort of black mass or diabolical chastisement going on – sets the tone, though director Bruno Gantillon then pulls way, way back after the opening credits, in a change of tone so startling it’s camp.
Suddenly we’re on holiday with two nice young women in the north of France. Everyday Anna and Françoise are in the most everyday of cars, the Ford Escort, driving in an everyday landscape to the sound of chintzy rinky-dink music.
The women pull in at an inn for refreshment. All the patrons are all old men. One man in particular stands out – a rum-looking cove who is short, has severe scoliosis, carries a stick and wears eye shadow, his bare legs dangling beneath what appears to be a dress.
Spooked, Anna (Michèle Perello) and Françoise (Mireille Saunin) finish their drinks and press on, pausing only in a barn, as spooked girls do, for some tokenistic girl-on-girl action.
Here, undressed, the two actresses gum each other’s dry flesh with dry lips in an unconvincing display obviously put on for the dirty-mac brigade.
Once that’s out of the way, everyone in front of and behind the camera can get on with the film’s real purpose – Anna and Françoise are wafted over a lake on a boat guided by fair maidens clad in shimmering chiffon (samite obviously not being available) and have soon been invited into the world of Morgana and her nymphs.
In this realm of youth and gorgeousness, candles flare, fires roar and the floor is carpeted in animal skins. Love and beauty are discussed. The short, sprite-like guy at the inn – name of Gurth (Alfred Baillou, a real asset) – turns out all along to have been the gatekeeper and chamberlain to this alternative world.
Anna and Françoise will eventually be offered a deal of eternal youth by Morgana (Dominique Delpierre), a Playboy-centrefold goth in blue eye shadow and flared sleeves. Your breasts will never sag, Morgana husks. Anna and Françoise dither. They are nice girls whose manual on etiquette doesn’t contain instructions for this sort of eventuality.
A pre-Raphaelite Arthurian vibe on a budget is the idea. There are naked women, though you’d be disappointed if that’s what you came for. The tone is more erotic than pornographic, languid rather than urgent, and there’s enough space in the pacing to start worrying about the health of the various young women clad in not very much at all. This is northern Europe, after all. Those stories about Elizabeth Siddal catching pneumonia in a cold bath while posing as Ophelia for John Everett Millais suddenly spring to mind.
This was Gantillon’s first film and he’d eventually go into TV, where he worked constantly. It’s rightly become a bit of a cult item. For all the sniggers to be had at various aspects, his film walks an assured line between the camp and the atmospheric – all those Abba poses while dialogue is traded – and he gives DP Jean Monsigny (also his first film) his head. The camera lurks, and Monsigny pays homage to older French cinematic stylists like Michel Carné and films like Les visiteurs du soir while avoiding pastiche.
Eventually, and it seems obvious it would happen once it does start happening, there is an expressive dance sequence, performed by actresses who may have fibbed about their abilities in their audition, before Gantillon yields to the demands of the back office – naked girl-on-girl action to round everything off, this time a touch more convincingly.
It’s absurd, for sure, but highly evocative, some of it added by the passing of the years, some of it right there when Gantillon and co were shooting it. And running right through it is a subversive message to this generation obsessed with youth and their ownership of it – get over yourselves.
Girl Slaves of Morgana Le Fay – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2026
