Besides good photography, the strength of the movie lies in the natural beauty and charm of characters that take part in the story and especially in the main character played by Corinne Clery. A classic beauty, sometimes a symbol of total femininity, sometimes just a little girl.... Femininity brought down to a vessel of pleasure and bliss, a thing, a perfect slave. Masochistic and sadistic themes are very well known in cinematography but "Histoire d'O" depicts the subject in a surreal (through stylizations, interior design, tone and color ) poetic way. All this with a bit of nostalgia which brings to mind movies like Emanuelle. Although it seems ingenuous and naive like all the other movies from that time, the main plot of the movie is presented in a direct, explicit way, without any special colorization or touch-ups made for the viewer in mind.