The film opens with O (Corinne Cléry, Hitch Hike) being taken by her lover to a chateau in the Parisian suburb of Roissy. While in the car along the way, she is prepared for her arrival by removing her bra and panties, after which he blindfolds her and ties her wrists behind her back.

Once inside the chateau, she is washed and groomed by several young women for her introduction to a secret club that will train her to be constantly available sexually to its members, even in the course of her daily life after she leaves the chateau.

Once presented, she is blindfolded again and rudely and quickly penetrated in all three openings. The blindfold is removed and the club’s rules are explained to her, after which she is tied to a post and severely whipped. There follows several weeks of strict regulation, sexual servitude, and whippings.

While at the chateau, O must wear her cuffs and a floor-length gown, cut low in front so her breasts are always exposed. A slit in the front and back goes up to her waist so either track is freely available. Her days are free, but her evenings must be spent in the company of men who are allowed to take her in any way they choose, at any moment. She must never look into the eyes of a man, nor speak in the public areas of the chateau, under the penalty of being immediately whipped.

Her lover requests special treatment for O. She is kept in a dungeon and whipped daily for several weeks, following which she is released from the chateau and returned to her regular life.

O’s lover wants her to prove her love by submitting herself to his step-brother, Sir Stephen, who promises O he will never love her, only use her. She assents to that relationship.

Sir Stephen in turn sends O to the estate of Anne-Marie, who trains young women to be even more compliant than they were when they left Roissy. O is brutally whipped on her first day there, but only that one time. O leaves Anne-Marie wearing a large ring through her labia, and Sir Stephen’s brand on her lower back.

O is invited for lunch with Sir Stephen and two of his friends. She allows herself to be taken by one of them in mute compliance. A younger member of the group takes her to a hotel for a sexual romp. He falls in love with her and wants to rescue her from this life. Instead of saying no, O arranges for him to meet her at Sir Stephen’s apartments. When he arrives, the young man finds O in a copy of the torture chamber at Anne-Marie's Sir Stephen had made especially for her, tied between two columns, having just been savagely whipped. Aghast, he rushes out of the room.

In the final scene, O is taken to a costume party, naked, but wearing an elaborate owl’s-head mask. She is led by a chain attached to her collar. The guests inspect her as if she were a moving object and not a human being. End.

Pauline Réage wrote Histoire d’O as a love letter to her husband, Jean Paulhan. Réage, a plain woman, worried that she could not keep the attention of her dashing husband. When he read it, her urged her to publish it, which she later did under, this pen name. It is not recorded if she also got laid that night. Even though the book was banned in France, and everywhere else, it nonetheless won literary awards. It was not published in English until 1965.

Get the book, read it. It is pornography written as literature. The first forty pages or so are incendiary. Liking S&M without having read Story of O is like liking Jesus without having read the New Testament.

Not so for seeing this movie, however. Jaeckin’s treatment has been criticized for walking around the edges of the book, and Cléry for being too wimpy to be a good bottom. Both of those complaints have merit. There is copious nudity in the film, and whipping, but sex scenes barely rise to the level of softcore porn. The movie could have been filmed hardcore without inserts. Whipping scenes could have been graphic as well. The book details a harness O wears while at Roissy that holds a series of increasingly larger anal plugs to widen that track to make it more accessible for men who prefer that opening. Not mentioned at all in the film. As it is, the viewer never winces at anything that happens to O.

We never completely understand O’s motivation, either. She goes to Roissy to prove her love to her younger lover, but she does not love Sir Stephen. Perhaps he has fallen in love with her role, and what she has become, as she hints leading up to the party that concludes the movie. She is proud of who she now is. It must be that O found a way to take a common female desire to be dominated to an extreme.

Even more, the book explains, “she liked the idea of torture, when she underwent it she would have betrayed the entire world to escape it, and when it was over she was happy to have undergone it, and happier still the more cruel and prolonged it had been.”

There is a small subplot of O complicity luring one of her models, Jacqueline, to Roissy to be trained, which she eventually does. The book has a second subplot of a young girl, Natalie, about thirteen, who watches O being punished and comforts O when she is left hanging in her restraints after each beating. Natalie wants to be just like her and is upset when told she is too young to be taken to Roissy herself. Jaeckin wisely didn't go near that one.

That the film of The Story of O was less than it could have been was no doubt mitigated by the need to play it in legitimate theaters rather than X houses that were prevalent at the time. Given the current restrictions on showing S&M combined with graphic penetration, and the reactionary mood of these times, it might be a good while before an honest adaptation of this novel is ever put on the screen.

This version is, however, is a good start. O spends more screen time naked than clothed. Lush interiors, lots of beautiful naked women, lots of cuffs and whips, make Story of O worth your time.