The 34th

8, 13/1

Broadway Cinematheque

French Cinepanorama

This homage to Cocteau's poetic cinema is a triangular love story between a mother, her son, and his lover. The highly precarious, illusionary pathos of rose, the symbol of love, the (artistic) cultivation of which the son
abandons in favour of his obsessive passion for the body of his beloved. The mother, an infinitely tender, guards over her son, but is unable to communicate with him any longer. More and more fanatically he transports himself into his “amour fou”. He transforms his beloved into an idol, of whom in the end he takes complete possession in a ritual murder, planting roses in the wounds he has inflicted on him. The gothic imagery, the myth of Icarus, homosexual desire, bondage, mother love, religious ritual, all remind us of how Cocteau would visualize his literary works.