by Clarke Fountain
synopsis
This Czechoslovakian film adapts two stories by Giovanni Boccaccio from his 14th-century book The Decameron, -- one of the first European works of literature to appear in a vernacular tongue instead of Latin. The first story, called "The Arabian Horse," recounts how a young man gets permission from the mayor to spend 15 minutes alone with the mayor's wife. The second, full of secret assignations and mistaken identities, tells the somewhat farcical story of how a middle-aged woman reawakens her husband's sensuality. Despite the stories' racy subject matter, this film is not pornographic but is rather a well-produced historical drama.
