Paprika. -Tinto Brass film-

A young country girl comes to town and works in a brothel in order to help her fiance get the money to start his own business. "Paprika" is the name given to her by the madam.

Paprika

(birth name: Mimma Fiore)

Age: 21

Ethnic Origin: Caucasian (uncommon Venetian-Irish fusion heritage: the luminous fair skin with natural rosy flush and thick, wild auburn waves from her Irish grandmother who fled to Venice in the 1940s, blended with the sultry, expressive green eyes and voluptuous Italian curves inherited from her father’s old Venetian family).

Studies: No formal university degree — instead, an intensely private, six-month “apprenticeship in the arts of pleasure” under the last surviving madam of a pre-Merlin Law Venetian pleasure house, combined with self-taught mastery of 18th-century erotic literature (she can quote Fanny Hill chapter-and-verse while blindfolded).

Job: Elite private courtesan and “resident muse” at the ultra-secret Nocturne Salon — a members-only 1950s-style pleasure villa hidden in the hills outside the city where powerful clients pay small fortunes for an evening (or weekend) of her undivided, joyfully uninhibited company. She chooses her guests personally.

Background: Born in a tiny fog-shrouded village on the Venetian lagoon to a struggling fisherman father and a dreamer mother. At 19 she followed her fiancé to the city, willing to work two weeks in a discreet house to fund his “big dream.” The madam immediately renamed her Paprika for her fiery hair and even spicier nature. Her fiancé betrayed and abandoned her after pocketing the money. Instead of returning home broken, she chose to stay — discovering that she adored the work, the power, the pleasure, and the freedom.

Plot

In 1958, on the verge of the Merlin Law that makes brothels illegal, Mimma, a young country girl, comes to town and decides to work as a prostitute in order to help her fiancé get the money to start their own business, and is given the name Paprika at the house of Madame Collette. After her fiancé betrays her, Mimma gives up her original ambitions and decides to pursue a career as a prostitute. In the process, she loses any sense of self-confidence and self-respect, but eventuall