What Does a Sympathetic Portrayal of Sexual Assault on Screen Look Like?
As Sexual Assault Awareness Month comes to an end, I’d like to urge viewers and filmmakers to take a long and hard look at how rape is portrayed on screen.
Les fleurs du mal
Charles Baudelaire was one of the giants of 19th-century French poetry, and he earned his position among that nation's luminaries through the poems in one slim volume, entitled Les Fleurs du Mal (Flowers of Evil). A perfectionist to the extreme, he struggled with every word of those few poems for many years before he consented to see them published. When he did, six of them were condemned by the state censors as obscene. It was surely a powerful blow to him to have such a significant part of his life's work so rudely suppressed. This courtroom drama follows him at the 1857 trial at which he defended his works. The filmmaker has chosen to symbolically re-enact certain poems about the love of a woman as they are being read for the court. It is easy to imagine that, as was certainly the case for the trial of Oscar Wilde in England, this courtroom trial was a form of punishment for his publicly dissolute lifestyle.
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Charles Baudelaire was one of the giants of 19th-century French poetry, and he earned his position among that nation's luminaries through the poems in one slim volume, entitled Les Fleurs du Mal (Flowers of Evil). A perfectionist to the extreme, he struggled with every word of those few poems for many years before he consented to see them published. When he did, six of them were condemned by the state censors as obscene. It was surely a powerful blow to him to have such a significant part of his life's work so rudely suppressed. This courtroom drama follows him at the 1857 trial at which he defended his works. The filmmaker has chosen to symbolically re-enact certain poems about the love of a woman as they are being read for the court. It is easy to imagine that, as was certainly the case for the trial of Oscar Wilde in England, this courtroom trial was a form of punishment for his publicly dissolute lifestyle.
Rating:
Genre:Drama, History
Written By:Jean-Pierre Rawson
In Theaters:
Box Office:
Runtime:85 minutes
Studio:Canal+, Francis Dreyfus Musique
Cast
Jean-Pierre Rawson
Director
Antoine Duléry
Baudelaire
Jean-Marie Lemaire
Procureur Pinard
Patrice-Flora Praxo
Jeanne Duval
Marianne Assouline
Mme Sabatier
Claude Aufaure
Abbé Richard
Jean-Claude Bolle-Reddat
Boissard
Yan Brian
Bourdin
Annick Christiaens
Escrimeuse
Paulo Matos
Avocat
Jean-Pierre Mangeot
Delacroix
Carloto Cotta
Young Baudelaire
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