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The sci-fi feint at the onset offers colored fluids in beakers, among them is the blood drawn from a woman bare but for a blue hood. Judex masks are worn by stalkers after a redhead in an orange nightgown (Caroline Cartier), her would-be savior (Olivier Rollin) witnesses the abduction to a cacophony of scratching fiddles and passing subways and canine whines, "mind your own business" is the advice from his father (Maurice Lemaître). The gathering of the suicide sect is a black-tie affair in a gated manor, a chosen member shoots herself with a smile and the enigmatic maiden laps from her wound. "A goddess" to cultists, to researchers the key to "something that surpasses the imagination: Immortality." An early Jean Rollin noctune, a lysergic rivalry with Borowczyk, a Marienbad to call his own. Arcane mysteries need solving but there's no rush, plenty of time for the camera to absorb an odalisque with pointy pasties or a model with golden talons. A high angle notes the crumbling chateau with a fire pit as the nucleus of a vast circular design, candelabras illuminate the gloom with the help of off-screen flashlights and drumbeats announce the siege. (A long shot has pale architecture gradually dotted with torch-wielding figures.) "What you have seen and what you will see are only part of reality," intones Michel Delahaye with all his Rivette connotations. Swaths of thrifty negative space, a soundscape attentive down to the clanking of the metallic miniskirts worn by twin servants (Catherine Castel, Marie-Pierre Castel). "The prototype of the future" lies behind a curtain tended by a melancholy old couple, Rollin awaits the mutant apocalypse with optimism. With Bernard Musson, Ursule Pauly, Pascal Fardoulis, Jean Aron, and Paul Bisciglia.
--- Fernando F. Croce |