Above is a Japanese promo poster for the Swedish sexploitation classic Anita, aka Anita: Swedish Nymphet, which is the story of a young nymphomaniac. Let’s just say up front that we’re aware many people think nymphomania doesn’t exist, and is rather just a term coined by alarmed men to label women who didn’t obey their gender roles. Twenty-three-year-old Christina Lindberg plays a sixteen-year-old title character who fails to do exactly that, throwing convention aside and bedding everyone in sight, from friendly acquaintances to unknown, smudge-covered vagrants. Most of the encounters that don’t take place in an actual bed occur in a dirty tent she’s discovered near a downtown construction site. We loved these seductions in particular, because the set-ups were exactly the same as you’d find in a serial killer movie, with the guys casting a worried eye toward her tent and saying nervously, “Er, you want to do it in there?”
Anyway, poor Anita has a dozen or so sexual encounters, all unfulfilling, and even gets run out of one town, perhaps undeservedly, before finally meeting a doctor who thinks he may be able to help. The doctor is played by an unrecognizably young Stellan Skarsgård—Alexander Skarsgard’s father, for you fans of True Blood—but who we prefer to think of as the villain from the 1998 Robert DeNiro actioner Ronin, a movie that for the first 100 of its 122 minutes is among the best spy thrillers ever made. Anita is much the same—the first 80 minutes or so are excellent and exceedingly serious sexploitation, but its inevitable path toward redemption for the lead character tries the patience just a bit. In the remake, if there ever is one, we suggest Anita dismember some guys in her tent. Considering their age and her obvious youth, they’d deserve it. Anita premiered in Sweden in 1973 and finally made its way to Japan today in 1976.
