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"Impressions of the French Composer." Period props unloaded from trucks, artificial rain, record of a BBC biopic being put together. "His own words and relationships," the artist never at home in Paris or London. The director (Vladek Sheybal) doubles as Pierre Louÿs, mentor and pornographer, the actor playing Debussy (Oliver Reed) favors immersion, much to the annoyance of his swinging bird (Annette Robertson). A visit to the museum lays out the subject's approach, music inspired by paintings, plays and poems, thus Ken Russell's cinema inspired by music. "It sounds lousy in English." Rousseau interludes, "Jardins sous la pluie." The modern heroine is also long-suffering Gaby Dupont, impatient with the past, doing a spiteful striptease to "Danse sacrée et danse profane." Clock in the garter belt, bloomers on the lenses. Liberties with storytelling, "they wanted Saint Sebastian to be played by a naked woman." "Gigues," "Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune," "La mer." Melodic trances don't pay the bills, the frazzled wife (Penny Service) is ditched for Madame Bardac (Izabella Telezynska). Rossetti is a kindred spirit, so are Baudelaire and Whistler, for the hipster café there's The Kinks. Maeterlinck "the Belgian Shakespeare" prefers Wagner, the hambone portraying him (Vernon Dobtcheff) crosses swords with his adversary. (The madcap montage that ensues, with execution by suction darts and ping-pong balls raining down on the dancing couple's faces, is Russell already in full flight.) Screenings for the cast. "Was he really such a bastard?" The alliance with Poe is a dead end, two or three sheets of music in a decade-long search for a magnum opus. "I am Roderick Usher." Reisz's The French Lieutenant's Woman owes a debt, indeed. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |