Hecate

Hecate

Words usually come too late

1982 · 105 min · ★ 5.7 · Drama, Romance

Set amid the European community in an unspecified North African country, a colony on the verge of nationalism just before the war. And colonized is what happens to a French diplomat, Julien Rochelle, when he meets the mysterious beauty Clothilde de Watteville. Schmid 's favorite axiom, that love is projection, never had such a thorough airing. Is Clothilde really the wife of a French official now holed up in Siberia? Or is she Hecate, goddess of black magic and devourer of the Arab boys she meets far from the European quarter? Only our projections know for sure; for the rest, she is a "woman looking out into the night." Drawn from a novel by Paul Morand, who based the main character on his wife Helene, Schmid's film achieves an atmosphere of magic in which psychological credibility is not so much absent as irrelevant-a film that distances itself from the drama it invokes, perhaps as the elusive Clothilde turns her back on the madness she provokes.

Directed by Daniel Schmid · Written by Pascal Jardin

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Cast

Bernard Giraudeau Julien Rochelle
Lauren Hutton Clotilde
Jean Bouise le consul de France
Jean-Pierre Kalfon Massard
Gérard Desarthe Le colonel de Watteville
Juliette Brac Miss Henry
Patrick Thursfield L'Anglais
Suzanne Thau La tenancière du bordel
Raja Reinking La fille du bar
Mustapha Tsouli Ibrahim
Teco Celio Le capitaine Berta
Rose-Marie Schneider

Make it a double feature

3h 20m together

Hecate

Violanta

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