for women only
Douglas Messerli
Frank Budgen (director) The Appointment
/ 1996 [commercial advertisement]
In a short commercial advertisement of
about a minute in length, filmed in deep shades of yellow, red, and black,
director Frank Budgen featured a stunningly coifed woman pull off her robe, sit
down to her dressing table, a put on a sex black negligee, all altering in time
with her slinking across an elegant bistro, turning men’s heads as she proceeds
as if the shapely black dress in which she is now attired revealed her
undergarments.
The music’s heavy throb makes her out to be almost a panther, the men
all turning toward her in an attempt to discover the man to whom she “belongs.”
The constant cuts between her dressing for the occasion and her final appearance,
of course, do make her seem like she were still undressed, appearing in public
in the Boisvert lingerie for which she is the model.
The joy and irony of this all male looky-loo, however, is the fact that
at the very back of the restaurant sits, back turned to us, another beautiful
woman upon whose shoulder the first woman briefly rests her hand before she
joins the sitting female as they kiss, lip to lip, a script appearing over the
image asking “Do Men Deserve It?”
As if their deep kisses and a stroking hand across the cheek doesn’t prove
it, the ad immediately tells us “No.”
The
ad ends in the address: Boisvert, 51 Neal Street, Convent Garden, as if it were
a place to check out for just such a delicious treat, whether it be the woman
or the lingerie, it doesn’t say.
Los Angeles, February 3, 2026 | Reprinted from My
Queer Cinema blog (February 2026).
