"Laura" is quite a bit better than "Bilitis", the photographer-turned-filmmaker David Hamilton, for a few reasons. For one thing, it has a stronger sense of plot, which makes it more watchable and carries the movie past its boring bits. "Bilitis" was barely about anything. For another, the actresses are much better looking this time. Dawn Dunlap, who plays Laura, is beautiful. Patti D'Arbanville, who played "Bilitis", was not. Even the male lead is better looking this time.

The plot: the protagonist is a sculptor who shares his favourite subject with Hamilton: beautiful teenage girls in the nude. He reconnects with an old flame, and becomes infatuated with her fifteen-year-old daughter, Laura. He wants to sculpt her, but the mother is jealous and comes between them. For some reason she'll only allow him to use photos of the girl naked to sculpt from. Later on, however, the sculptor is blinded in a fire, and the movie has its climax when Laura allows the artist to run his hands over her nude body, so as to recreate this nubile terrain in stone.

"Laura" has a very similar structure to "Bilitis". It begins like a fly on the wall observing the dreamy, halcyon day-to-day life of a group of beautiful schoolgirls, of course showing them frolicking nude in the shower like "Bilitis" did. Regrettably, when the plot kicks in the movie largely leaves its gratuitous nudity behind, which is the same mistake that movie made. At least here, the plot is enough to carry the movie, and I found it more watchable than the director's first pic.

Not sure how Laura, Shadows of a Summer passes muster, but damn, the French sure know how to do things.

There are actually some nice cinematic touches in here, heh.

I was 12 when this came out, saw it later in the 80s and currently picked up the dvd at a charity shop and watched it again as an old man lol. It was nice to see something you saw as a young man and look back and realize how simple yet complex being young was in those days, we were kids but thought we were adults at 15, (Dawn was 17 in real life) most of us were experimenting or well past at that age, or at least my crowd was. I remember a few girls in grade 8 that looked 18 that were carrying on with our gym teacher on lunch breaks in his van doing the cheech and chong and get naked routine, (yes Julie L I'm referring to you ha ha)

As far as the movie goes it was all over the place and though it didn't seem to be put together well, it made sense. Some people have commented why the mother sent pics but wouldn't allow him to see Laura, well she wanted him to remember her and tempt him back using Laura's beauty since her marriage was dead. She wanted him for herself until she realized he only loves illusions of women. That's why she wasn't angry at her daughter or Paul when she allowed the daughter to say goodbye to her "ballet friends" but saw him instead before being sent away to school or wherever, mom knew it would be good for her to close that chapter and Paul was innocent enough. Another comment was how did Paul just walk in the ballet class and not get questioned? Well his helper was in the class and invited him along to see the girls, simple. As far as the age gap, looking at it with North American eyes it may seem a little too much, but in France you can drink wine at 12, date older men and it's nothing to look twice at, I think it was a nice slice of coming of age and reminding us we were all nubile and young at one point, we never change totally, just grow older.