The 34th

12/12

AF Mediatheque

French Cinepanorama

Filmed in situ in The Stark Space of the Ateliers Berthier with its towering stone walls, Stéphane Metge's film does more than merely capture the production of Phaedra directed by Patrice Chéreau; it seems to recreate it. In this empty space where palace steps can easily transform into the entrance to a tomb.

Dominique Blanc portrays the woman torn apart in front of our eyes by a forbidden love, a confession that cannot be confessed and that leads her to suicide: her love for her stepson, the chaste Hippolytus.

Chéreau's interpretation of Racine's tragedy of desire and death, centers on the question of “How to say the unspeakable” and the portrait of this beautiful, lost woman, this living disgrace who breaks all the taboos,
undermines all the rules. Patrice Chéreau and Dominique Blanc take us to the edge of the abyss, the boundless, bottomless enigma of female desire beyond all reason and morality.