Directed by: Vinnie Rossi
Stars: Kay Parker, Tamara Longley, Mai Lin, Bunny Bleu, Susanne Winters, Becky Savage, Misty Dawn, Angelique Ricard
Language: English
Country: Usa | Imdb Info
Description: Years after losing the woman he loved, wealthy Tobias Clark remains haunted by a single word: desire.
As a young man, Tobias believed money, success, and luxury would bring him everything he wanted. But Lilly, the woman at the center of his life, walked away when she realized that his deepest commitment was not to love but to ambition. Now elderly, isolated, and still unable to understand the choice that shaped his life, Tobias hires psychologist Dr. Varlay to help him uncover what Lilly truly meant.
Dr. Varlay begins interviewing a series of people about their private fantasies, asking each of them to define desire in their own way. Their stories unfold as a collection of loosely connected vignettes: romantic daydreams, unexpected attractions, playful transformations, and intimate scenarios where imagination briefly takes control of reality.
One man recalls an encounter shaped by loneliness and illusion, where a seemingly lifeless figure becomes the focus of an elaborate fantasy. Another interview explores the thrill of spontaneity. Elsewhere, attraction between friends and roommates opens the door to questions of identity, curiosity, and the difference between what people admit publicly and what they secretly want.
As the interviews continue, Dr. Varlay finds herself becoming less detached from the subject. Listening to other people describe their longings forces her to confront her own, and the clinical exercise gradually turns into a personal awakening. Tobias’s assistant Carlos and several of the interview participants become part of a shifting emotional landscape where observation gives way to self-discovery.
The individual stories eventually return to Tobias and Lilly. At the end of his life, Tobias finally understands the painful simplicity of the answer he has spent decades searching for: Lilly did not leave because he desired too much. She left because he valued wealth more than the person who loved him.
Legacy Note:
Desire is an unusually ambitious example of early-80s adult couples cinema, using a fantasy-compendium structure to explore longing, curiosity, and regret rather than relying on one continuous plot. Directed by Vinnie Rossi, the film combines soft-focus photography, wistful flashbacks, and a surprisingly melancholy framing story built around Tobias’s lost romance.
Its individual vignettes vary in tone, moving between playful fantasy and introspection, but the emotional thread remains clear: desire can be romantic, imaginative, impulsive, or deeply self-destructive. Anchored by Kay Parker as Dr. Varlay and by the contrast between the younger and older versions of Tobias, the film reaches for something more reflective than the average anthology feature of its period. Uneven but sincere, it survives as a likable Golden Age curiosity with an unexpectedly bittersweet heart.
Members Only Video
Film information, full movie description, and selected notes are available to all visitors. Screenshot galleries and restored uncut streaming videos are available only for active members.
Already registered? Please log in to watch this movie.
