The Ape Woman (1964) is an Italian French drama directed by Marco Ferreri and starring Ugo Tognazzi and Annie Girardot. The film tells the disturbing story of a woman with hypertrichosis who is exploited by her husband and turned into a public attraction. Blending social critique with unsettling intimacy, the film explores greed, power, and human cruelty rather than traditional genre thrills. Ferreris approach is deliberately provocative and emotionally uncomfortable.

CultFilms

THE APE WOMAN is the highest-praised film by Marco Ferreri, the over-the-top iconoclastic director known for La Grande Bouffe. His signature edgy exploration of the grotesque was revered by the Cannes Festival who awarded many of his works.

Famously irreverent, Ferreri was so off-beat and scathing as an author implacably dissecting our societal mores in all his masterful films, that he was labelled dangerous! The film is inspired by a true story of the nihilistically cruel exploitation of a young carnival performer, Julia Pastrana, whose body was completely covered in hair.

She is brought to life here by an extraordinary Annie Girardot  Frances highest-paid actress of the time in a natural measured and elegant performance from which emanates the ambiguous emotion of being alluring yet devastatingly poignant as the ape woman.

An unscrupulous hustler (a magnificent Ugo Tognazzi) discovers the young woman in a convent and marries her in order to get her on the freak-show circuit and cash in on the distinctive appearance of her body and face covered in hairs.

This world 1st ever Blu-ray shows all versions of the film, recently restored in 4K for the Venice Film Festival, finally doing justice to the previously condemned film. First is Ferreris own edit now complete and uncut. And 2nd, the Producers longer, upbeat ending version which garnered a Palme Dor nomination at the 1964 Cannes