Immoral Tales [patched] May 2026
Immoral Tales is a flawed masterpiece—a diamond that is also a razor blade. Borowczyk asks: What if morality is just a story we tell ourselves to hide what we really want? He doesn't answer. He simply shows you the question, carved in flesh and blood.
Walerian Borowczyk, the Polish-born filmmaker often overshadowed by his contemporary Roman Polanski, crafted in Immoral Tales a work that defies easy categorization. Is it pornography? Art film? A surrealist essay on desire and power? The answer, frustratingly and brilliantly, is all of the above. The film’s title is a provocation, but also a promise: these are not mere sex scenes, but —morality tales told in reverse. immoral tales
The first two episodes feel like sketches or exercises. The Tide is lovely but slight. Thérèse is playful but drags its joke. The film truly awakens only with the brutal 30-minute centerpiece of Erzsebet Bathory . The final Lucrezia is beautiful but so abstract it risks losing the viewer entirely. You sense Borowczyk was less interested in narrative than in creating four distinct "rooms" of desire. Immoral Tales is a flawed masterpiece—a diamond that
Paloma Picasso’s terrifying, silent queen. The blood-bath scene, which will never leave your memory. The feeling that you are glimpsing something truly forbidden—not because it is pornographic, but because it is honest. He simply shows you the question, carved in flesh and blood
Rating: ★★★★☆ (4/5) – A sumptuous, shocking, and strangely philosophical gallery of erotic obsessions.