Set during a recent European revolution, when the students have just begun to rise, the film focuses on the unusual relationship between Dr. Pavenic and his housekeeper, Ana. In the midst of a night alive with the rattle of gunfire and burning buildings, the doctor tells the story of his obsession for his enigmatic housekeeper, to a dinner table of his guests. His shocking honesty eventually prompts each guest in turn, to disclose some inner corner of his own life.
Director: Nicolas Roeg.
Writers: Stephen Dobyns (novel), Allan Scott.
Stars: Sonia Braga, Michael Gambon, Patrick Malahide, Nickolas Grace, Ion Caramitru, Sevilla Delofski, Ravil Isyanov, Matt Terdre, John Shrapnel, Karl Tessler, Lisa Orgolini, Niall Refoy, Andrew Tiernan, Rade Serbedzija.
1995 Chicago International Film Festival – Nominated for the Gold Hugo.
What a fabulous rough diamond! Bunuel/Chekovian surrealism sits well in the heart of revolution torn Bucharest, a tip to the movements roots in post ww1 central Europe. If Romania were a woman, these men of letters and learning and medicine and power each have a part to play in her dark subjugation; a cruel and nasty tale of the twisting coercive effect of totalitarian negation of the human spirit. Thanks for posting.
Here I lies a film placed in the archives in the basement file and we see here some very deep and highly exalted fusion to express a world of Eastern Europe pre 90s and it’s poetic cruel and emotional forms that are quite particular in vibration to this time. Roeg bravely attempted and gave his own magnicent eye into these actors and yet its never played or regarded in his body work. Sacrifice and sufference, cruelty and love, obsession in a viral world, where a man desires more than his own soul. Here Roeg stands high on this point, with the enigma of the title. Not perfect or commercially successful but ‘we are not interested in the results of the immediate’ , so said Roeg quoting Voltaire.