"Clodius wanted to burn down the house of Milo." "And the slaves who were on guard killed him at nightfall." "Then, Clodia was desperate." "She took and rejected Catullus." "Then Caelius Rufus, then Ignatius, who friends had brought to the lowly taverns." "But she loved only her brother, Clodius." "For him she had poisoned Lucius Lucullus, her husband." "For him she had picked up and seduced bands of arsonists." "When he died, the object of her life vanished." "She remained beautiful and passionate." "The insolence shining in her eyes remained always the same." "SCENE 2 PIANO-BAR." "INTERIOR EVENING." "The hushed atmosphere." "The insinuating penumbra of a piano bar." "Clodia is sitting in a corner with a glass in hand, sipping slowly." "Between her fingers, a cigarette." "Quiet, detached, so elegant in her black, transparent dress." "Her long legs crossed, uncovering most of her thigh, rendering more clearly the nudity under her light dress." "There is a Brazilian pianist, playing, and very few people." "Thus, we can assume, an unusual hour." "But for Clodia, time is the same as desire." "Flowing, then, on a different quadrant than that which measures the daily succession of hours." "A man approaches and sits by her." "Gestures, looks, brief phrases we cannot hear." "Everything is conventionally exemplary ." "Clodia stands and the man follows her." "The camera lingers a few moments, describing the surroundings." "SCENE 3 PATHWAY OF A CITY PARK ." "EXTERIOR NIGHT." "Clodia's night is an open womb." "Empty." "On some pathway, in the middle of a park we see a parked car, with its headlights off." "Inside, is Clodia with her client." "Silently, methodically, with the hunger of a beast devouring its prey and that which, in its turn, is devoured," "Clodia offers herself to a stranger." "As for him we cannot see his face." "And can barely even make out his outline." "Because he is completely inside the black of Clodia." "Her mourning as well as her shadow." "Only bathed by lightning." "The whiteness of her nakedness unleashed." "The face of Clodia, however, stands out." "Seeming like a second moon." "Cold." "Bright." "Perennial." "We should live, my Lesbia" "And love" "And value all the talk of stricter" "Old men at a single penny" "Suns can set and rise again" "For us, once our brief light has set" "There's" "One unending night for sleeping" "Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred" "Then still another thousand, then a second hundred" "Then, when we've made many thousands" "We'll muddle them so as not to know" "Or lest some villain overlook us" "Knowing the total of our kisses" "HOUSE CATULLUS:" "PERISTYLIUM." "EXTERIOR, SUNSET." "Linear, straightforwardly, a movement of the dolly slowly reduces the total image up to a classic close-up of Catullus who is walking in a garden, in the company of a friend at the hour of sunset." "The poet is talking about Clodia." "Of his Lesbia." "He says:" "That man is seen by me as God's equal" "Or (if it may be said) the God's superior" "Who sitting opposite again" "Watches and hears you laughing" "Sweetly" "Which dispossesses poor me" "Of all my senses" "No sooner do I see you Lesbia" "Than there's no power left me (Of speech... in my mouth)" "But my tongue's paralysed" "Invisible flame courses through my limbs" "My ears are ringing" "And twin darkness covers... my eyes" "Nobody perhaps will ever live" "like me from the time of Eve" "For myself I'm a wonder, I am" "Created, I don't know, if one... or two" "If double person or singular monster." "Nevertheless, I am happy." "Because a creature of the Lord who loves me." "SCENE 8 ORANGERY." "INDOOR / OUTDOOR." "AFTERNOON / EVENING." "The striking 20th century architecture of an orangery." "White walls." "Large windows." "Now used as a multi-purpose space for events of various nature." "World-culture." "Indeed, we see loitering with the perfect vacuity of the occasion a crowd of guests." "All people are perfect cliché." "Intellectuals with untrustworthy expressions, some artists variously legitimate." "Zealous upstarts." "Then, men of power and money." "Women elegant and mannered." "The inevitable attendees." "They are present at a private exhibition of jewellery." "Sponsored by a well-known aristocratic socialite signed by a famous designer." "Produced by a prestigious brand, the collection, composed of unique pieces of great commercial value, is presented with the statuesque support of 11 body-builders." "The idea proves to be effective, just." "The bodies, standing out, each on a pedestal are treated with paints and transparent lacquer to render them suggestive of imaginary patterns." "And this unconventional interpretation of classical iconography manages ironically to create the space where a modern sensibility can be exercised in subtle oscillations." "This extreme, controlling plasticity sets off each jewel to reveal its own preciousness in a non-inert and seductive appearance, through a more sophisticated enticement." "The great lady has an image that explicitly harkens to the stars of cinema's great past and that she confirms with her extravagant yet rigorous elegance." "The designer, complying in turn, with his duties as master of the house, skilled and careful to cover with his own studied presence the area of set left each time uncovered by her." "Plain-clothes officers are camouflaged among the crowd." "Impeccable waiters lightly hovering with trays and glasses." "Outside, in the garden space surrounding the orangery, is arranged the rich, cold buffet." "But, we recognize Clodia." "Not right away, and a little abruptly." "We have not yet seen her in a crowd, in a conventional setting." "Here she is, in a certain sense veiling the flame that she lights but without hiding or betraying it." "It's always her." "Unique." "Her reservedness, her appearance, her withdrawal appear each time divine." "Evading each usage or judgement." "It's inevitable that her presence always rouses a certain hypothetical enigma and the light of a diverse irony." "Risky." "We may think that Clodia is, paradoxically, the one, true precious object." "The only authentic jewel displayed, and who displays herself..." "incognito." "But with absolute awareness." "A man to one side never takes off his eyes off her." "Perhaps, without being noticed, studies her, shadows her." "Meanwhile, the scene is modulated with a natural beauty and spectacular logic." "Fragments of speeches, sparkling laughter, crystal and jewellery..." "Music emanates from an unseen source, complete and customised." "With admiration someone is saying:" ""It happens when you marry intelligence and imagination, you have these amazing results."" "The camera cannot fail to be rewarded with a beautiful image of the guest of honour." "With magnificent class they courteously reply..." "Saying:" ""Oh, you're really too kind." "Too good." "I did nothing but take into account a very simple thing." "The coupling that has always existed between jewellery and sex." "Here is a small example, but significant:" "in the Piedmontese dialect, the term "bijoux"" "was turned into "bigioia."" "It indicates at the same time, a conventional, typical jewel, those religious cards and the female sex." "Immediately one of the guests exclaims:" ""Yeah, in fact, through the category of the precious sex is deeply connected to the sacred." "The sacred becomes the first fundamental form of hoarding and the origins of economy is revealed."" "But an off-screen female voice interrupts, blaring:" ""Maria, at last!"" "She turns to who has claimed her and prepares for the encounter." "Then, the camera smoothly, diverts to another part of the scene." "Structuring the linear geometry of a dolly." "selecting images to the right and left with detailed variations in the panning shot," "Snapping up other conversations." "In a small group two men are talking sarcastically." "One says:" ""Gelio is reduced to a skeleton."" "And the other one clarifies:" "Of course, with a mother so attractive and unbridled." "That lovely sister, an uncle so accommodating and all that group of girls, his relatives, he's exhausted, it's only natural."" "Elsewhere, a young flame haired woman with a voice like crystal, divinely mannered makes this astounding statement:" ""Camorra?" "O, yes, of course." "It's that beautiful region with all those wild, white horses. "" "Clodia!" "Always in counterpoint." "Shimmering." "Or solemn." "An image increasingly dominant, impregnable." "Always waiting." "Surprising." "There's always the quiet one, who stealthily, one wants to decipher." "Other clear spaces, Vivid." "Details or portraits." "Other fragments of speech." "A young intellectual is telling two young women:" ""They're doing all that shit to climb Pimpleia" "But a few blows with the pitchfork and down go the Muses."" "Outside, around the buffet tables, they're dissecting a classic theme." "A forty-something, pretentious, bureaucratic, utters these words:" ""It's as if he bows down, unruly and a bit mocking to a higher life force." "After all, the image of the balloon, whore Madonna is only a parody version of the final, famous verses of the second Faust."" "We see the aristocratic patroness is coming in this direction chatting amiably with two people." "But, the camera doesn't linger." "Attracted rather by an unexpected situation in which the designer is involved." "There is, in fact, someone who complains." "It's a middle-aged lady of elegant appearance, who objects dryly:" ""It's a matter of good taste." "It is essential for me."" "Surprised and angry, the designer continues to fix her with a slight smile of cold misogyny." "And coolly replied:" ""You know, the fact is that..." "For me..." "There's just not enough time to have such taste. "" "And exaggerates the spoken tone with consummate skill to fake a sudden, false recourse to memory." "Adding:" ""Who was it already said, this phrase?"" "The woman, however, proves to be a worthy opponent." "Unperturbed, and with equal readiness, she replies:" ""Probably your caretaker."" "The man, then, puts even more into his polished sarcasm." "His words are sharp and musical:" ""Cheri, for all I know..." "Taste is the preserve of the idle and dilettantes." "And of those with time on their hands," "They employ it in slight trifles and in concerted futility." "Then he goes away." "Dragging a boy by the arm." "The sudden cut, beautiful, on Clodia laughing." "Her head a little thrown back." "Her white throat." "Throbbing." "And the point of view suggests that of a tireless voyeur." "In fact, here it is now in close-up." "Not masking a controlled discomfort." "Someone surprises him." "Approaches him, saying:" ""Too much is the pleasure that you test every fault where there is a degree of horror."" "Stares at him." "Returned in silence." "Together they look at Clodia." "They see her, still laughing." "Next to the same person who at brief intervals continues to whisper things in her ear." "The man who had spoken asks the other:" ""You know who she is?" "Know her?"" "His interlocutor says nothing." "It makes no sense to answer." "The dolly returns to Clodia." "That man moves away, but immediately another, young and elegant, approaches her, smiling." "He kisses her on the mouth, with freedom and with class." "And we hear as he addresses her as follows:" ""Who will live happier?" "Who will ever think about a life..." "more... more desirable than this one?"" "With a light gesture he prompts her to move away with him." "She accepts." "She's like a beast playing." "Lazy and perfidious." "If we don't ingenuously draw from pain's source we would never be able to reach the fury of laughing." "We'd have the cloudy colour of calculation." "Even obscenity is nothing but a form of pain." "SCENE X AUDITORIUM MECENATIS." "INTERIOR, DAY LIGHT." "A wide space." "Rectangular." "In the background, a semicircular flight of steps." "The archaeological location will be used as it is." "With no other manipulation, with a light intervention of furniture in a conceptual way." "Certainly not naturalistic-philological." "The effect is to disorient." "Capable of a pure evocation." "Near the semicircle, laid on two precious triclinium beds, we see the two Clodia." "But in the centre of the empty room, seated on a solemn, feminine desk static and arranged like a victorious god, is Clodius." "He wears a dazzling helmet and armour and equally greaves." "His hips and belly are naked." "A large purple cloak falls from his shoulders to the floor in a mannered drapery." "Music by flute and cymbals precedes the entrance of a strange parade." "A triumphal chariot." "Where instead of horses are substituted four naked gladiators." "Lead by a hopping, obscene mime dressed like a charioteer, metaphysical and sexless." "All around, moving with elegance and boldness, is a faun with a flute;" "a Syrian hetaera with cymbals and an old, veiled prostitute who holds high in one hand a glowing torch." "The horses' advance is spectacular." "Their genitals are inserted into cane flutes, from which exit colourful ribbons which are tied to the fingers of their hands that are involved in playing real flutes held to their lips." "Other sparkling ribbons are tied to knees, arms and chests and they fake equestrian vestments manipulated by the lewd charioteer." "This one heads the parade to honour Clodius, counterpointing the music with excellent actor's knowledge." "Respectful, servile and clownish derision of the majesty of the blasphemous tribune." "The two women attend, amused." "Taking candied grain from a tray that is held by the hands of a beautiful ephebe and caressing the black slave near them." "The figure of the old, veiled prostitute brings to mind a sort of night or death." "and trails pictorial references to Fuseli and Michelangelo." "Meanwhile Clodius, with a pronounced parodistic accent, begins to declaim:" ""That person, Publius Clodius Pulcher, felon enemy of his country, this wild agitator such a degenerate and ill-omened beast, to better become a tribune follows his lust for power, without shame." "No restraint." "Becoming adopted by an obscene plebeian." "Clodius!" "This female who always dragging behind a ragtag parade of perverts, actors and prostitutes and this same Clodius, who despises always judges and punishments and finds no delight in anything that is by nature or by law allowed." "He, whose guilt the Senate, in many sessions, deliberates, should be expiated with solemn, religious ceremonies." "This villainous character, reported by Lucius Lucullus' sworn statement regarding incestuous experiences with both his blood sisters." "That person, for which nothing is ever unlawful in actions or desires." "The same one who burned down the Temple of the Nymphs to erase the memories written in the censor's books." "This infamous one, Oh God, with the guilty city's forbearance that, I don't know how, will harden and toughen."" "In Clodius' monologue an aristocratic vulgarity embraces plebeian ostentation with rhetorical derision." "Once he finishes with sensual lightness and an excited look the Faun drags the old lady with the torch near that sort of monument." "Entranced, terrified, ironic, forces her to explore with the flame that dazzling identity." "And starts to declaim:" ""Too late, my friend, we arrive." "Gods live for sure." "But there, above our heads, in another world." "Without resting, there they operate and it seems they don't care too much if we live this way the deity spare us." "Because a weak vessel is not always able to contain them:" "Occasionally man sustains divine fullness." "Their dream then, after, is life." "Although the roaming aids like drowsiness:" "struggle and night make one strong, as much as heroes raised in a cradle of bronze." "Hearts, as in the past, to the celestial powers, are equal." "So, thundering they arrive." "But in the meantime" "I often wonder if it's better to sleep instead of remaining like this, without companions." "To languish waiting:" "what to do for now, what to say, I don't know:" "why poets, in a time of deprivation?"" "The marvellous fragment of Holderlin vibrates." "With the rhythm of the Faun in a free dance with which he connects to himself, to Clodius, each time more intensely the other figures there present." "Meanwhile the mime, on his part, with gestures and expressions of his metaphysical face enters and exits from the ideal space of the ode." "Almost opening and closing curtains on the itinerary of a vision." "SCENE 12 HOTEL ROOM." "NIGHT INTERIOR." "An ordinary room." "In a low class hotel." "By the light of an abat-jour, on a double bed, is a man stretched out." "Naked." "Near to him, wearing only stockings and garters..." "Clodia." "She rests on one knee with the other leg parted because she is masturbating in front of the unknown client to whom she has just given herself." "She doesn't see him and his look is one of satisfaction, obtusely without curiosity." "Clodia, however, must herself feel like a mountain at dead of night overlooking a lifeless landscape." "Suddenly, the man breaks the silence with these words:" ""Are you happy?"" "Clodia doesn't cease searching for an orgasm." "Throws just sidelong glance, dry as a whip." "Then, answering, her mouth draws an indefinable smirk and a gasp of pleasure devours an incomplete sarcastic laugh." "The tone of her voice is dark and ablaze." "She says:" ""Like a broom shaken in the air, for fun."" "Expanding her orgasm, finally she laughs and yelps with young and ancient excitement." "The man then begins to touch himself as well." "Clodia stares at him." "Enigmatic..." "Mocking." "Saying to him:" ""I'll be your slave." "Ask me whatever."" "The client looks at her with a vague distrust." "Because Clodia's voice is a diaphragm, transparent but insurmountable that isolates the figure even more deadly, in whatever abyss." "Accessible to nobody, but her." "Like in that sci-fi story." "Only one social ritual was left." "To go to the large satellite platforms... and contemplate in silence the intergalactic dusk." "Everyone immobile..." "Eyes fixed on the black and with noses silently pressed... against the void." "It's buzzing like a bee." "Listen." "Listen." "Go turn it off." "I don't want to." "It keeps me company." "Turn it off, I say." "As you wish." "We'll have this swarm of bees buzzing in our heads all night." "Could you imagine sleeping on a bed of flowers." "Roses and lilies." "And a pansy for your thoughts." "Who said that?" "A poet." "A nice cock that was playing the zither." "An idiot for sure." "A poor idiot." "Why?" "Because..." "I cannot bear the smell of lilies." "It's banal, eh?" " Also your comment is banal." "When you look like that, you scare me." "Clodia... has been frightened by Clodia." "Is it possible to be scared of ourselves?" "I'm not yourself." "They just called us by the same name, maybe to confuse us" "One with the other?" "Or both together with him?" "Always exquisitely beardless." "Sleeping between the two sisters named Clodia." "He was mocking and gallant." "I want to go out and I don't want to get up." "Let's play!" " What?" "Can I ask you some riddles?" "No." "Let's play dice." "Take them." "And then, if it suits us, at cards." "Seven" "What is the bet?" "The one who wins loses, right?" "SCENE XIV IN SUBURRA, ROAD, TAVERN, BORDELLO." "INTERIOR, EXTERIOR, NIGHT." "Again in detail, the dice thrown by Clodia at the end of the previous scene now fall on the table of a Suburra tavern, in ancient Rome." "Thrown by the hand of a player." "Around the two men playing, are 5 spectators." "In a corner, a drunken man is trying not to fall asleep and slurs unintelligible sentences." "An old pedlar enters to sell his chickpea cakes." "He offers them to two strangers seated silently at another table." "A little further away, we can see a prostitute in the company of a client." "Fondling him, she drags him away behind the curtain and up the stairs to the next floor." "The light of the oil lamps colours the room in warm shades." "Vibrating." "A tintinabulum dangles near the entrance." "The host is a young boy serving wine from amphoras." "Then the camera cuts to exterior." "So, in the glare of the torches held by two athletic slaves we can identify Clodius and Clodia along with the mime, the Faun, two gaudy effeminates and a young matron." "Their identities are all fake." "Clodius is disguised as a vagabond." "Clodia as a Syrian hetaera." "The Faun and the other woman as zither players." "The mime, grotesquely, as a soldier." "Along a narrow, dark street, among brothels and taverns the dolly, goes too, preceding and following." "Along the walls it captures lonely figures, tangled in the shadows." "Beggars, prostitutes, drunks..." "Clodius throws a quarter to a worn out whore." "And gestures to her both coarsely and comradely." "Gradually the group splits." "The mime, then the Faun and one of the effeminates drift into some degenerate mirage." "Lured and stolen by arms, by glances." "Inside a brothel, an incredibly made-up figure attends a crone who depilates with molten sugar the ass of a naked youngster." "And in an adjoining small room, on a rough, cubicle bed a whore is sucking a client's genitals while being sodomized by a second." "Then, a sordid gymnasium where gladiators are training." "A gigantic one with another, stocky, short and very muscular." "They inscribe in the air abstract pictures." "Movements full of tension and energy." "Now slowed down, now rapid." "They flex arms and legs, twisting torsos." "Everybody on his own, but synchronized in a counterpoint dance." "A third one, apart, is practising with the sword." "Two of them are stretched out on the floor, on mats, sleeping." "Someone passes by the tavern, raving with an excited voice where they are playing dice." "Leaving them to exit the shot, the camera can end its soft panning shot on that open entrance, the very moment it's crossed by Clodius," "Clodia, her friend and one of the effeminates." "The sudden cut to interior shows us in a tight close-up one of the strangers already seen." "His eyes shine with the boldness of a wild animal and are immobile." "Rapt." "Hooked into rapid and calibrated details a sudden silence seems to hibernate the scene." "So, pronouncing and provoking, we hear Clodia's unique voice-over saying:" ""I will be the prize for the winner."" "Immediately we can see her face." "She is regal, insolent, beautiful in her disguise." "Her brother and the other two man act like acolytes." "Clodius stretches his neck and kisses her." "He opens her cloak to exhibit her and to set up the challenge." "So, the stranger, who we saw in tight close-up, moves from his position." "Goes to sit at the dice table and asserts himself silently, nobly, as the first competitor." "With determination and elegance, he grabs the dice and stops the gesture mid-air, waiting." "A brief inexorable urge, perfect with close gaps, still buried in that silence full of held excitement foreseeing the danger without avoiding it." "But the scene pulls out." "An unexpected image appears." "Invasive." "It's the extraordinary mask of the mime, animated by a syncopated laugh." "It seems to place itself less in the fabric of the story than in the liturgy of language, for the sanction of its absoluteness." "In another corner of Suburra, he is the viewer of a violent scene." "Two half-undressed whores are scrambling on the floor, screaming, while a boy holds a bloody knife, still threatening another man who covers his blood-soaked face." "In this kind of visionary archaeology, other fragments are recounted, extracted lucidly from dream." "A still young man, in close-up, sits alone at a table and drinks yet another glass." "He is staring hard at a group of customers seated at another table in the opposite corner of the room." "He misses nothing of their agitated conversation." "There's a large person asserting with a bossy tone:" ""There were four of us, fucking her." "And yet, she could have taken ten more," "All together." " Noo, there's nobody like her among all the whores and matrons of Rome."" "Another man, quietly adds:" ""Aufilius, not more than 10 days ago, saw her calling out girls from the brothel near the Temple of Dioscuri, for one crown, and beating them all in the dangled thigh challenge."" "We see a section of porch starting from an open space next to a bakery." "Down there, leant against the wall a Mauritanian is explaining the signs of a geomantic chart traced on sand in a tray." "A lamp is lighting suggestively the scene." "He sits on a mat on the floor and behind him are two other Africans present, motionless, wrapped in dark blue cloaks." "His dark, tapered hands, touch lightly the sand's surface deleting and proposing again progressively the mysterious code." "Then, we discover that the one seated in front of him is the Faun disguised as a zither musician." "The geomancer, with his foreign accent, pronounces, simple words but charged with riddles." "He says:" ""Word re-sexualized." "Bird of fire or phoenix." "There is no universe." "There is not only one way."" "Around, in the dim light, figures and shapes are moving." "The camera catches for a moment the worried look on the Faun's face." "And then immediately glides fast away, on a dolly, as if dismayed, becoming blind in the darkness." "Meanwhile, in the tavern, the shaken dices fall." "Then stop." "Clodius drinks with the effeminate sat on his knee." "Clodia, in tight close-up, waits for the winner." "The other woman withdraws to a corner with one of the bystanders." "Beneath the porch, not far from the geomancer, a monkey tamer, with whip in his hands, teaches a barbary ape, with a round shield on his arm and a helmet on head, to throw a javelin against the target." "Of course, a bunch of rubbernecks surround them." "Finally, the dice are shaken for the last time." "The winner is really the stranger." "Clodia stares at him calmly, in silence." "Even he watches her, saying nothing." "He stretches his hand to lightly touch her belly with a nimble caress." "Animal." "He looks around and smiling, pronounces a few words in an obscure language." "His amber eyes darken in an instant, staring at Clodius, but immediately changing colour in a clearer glare." "He drops a hint to Clodia, but surprisingly not to demand her." "To reject her." "It's an uncompromising gesture with no offence." "On Clodia's face comes for a moment an incredulous look that immediately becomes confused, astonished." "Now, everything happens as in the mechanism of dream." "In a dull, inescapable progression and according to a sick and mysterious logic." "Instead of her womanly elegance the winner will gratify that of her brother." "Clodius is tied by three or four others, controlled." "Without violence, but in a way that allows no room for refusal." "The Faun, meanwhile, wearing a small cap woven from golden thread, with a thin belt tied under his breasts and a red veil wrapped over his tunic, is staring gravely at the geomancer's hand who is erasing the final signs in the sand." "And he fixes his face as he says:" ""To see three truths with the same spirit." "Things are real." "Are unreal..." "And neither real nor unreal."" "As in a ritual of sovereign donation, as for a rule of benevolent freedom, the stranger sodomizes Clodius." "Bent over the table and gripped in a steely working of arms he seems, at this point, parodying a martyr or victim, in a sophisticated scene of passion." "And it's what Clodia watches and sees, fascinated." "But all of a sudden, she flees." "looking away and covering her mouth with the back of her hand, petrified for a moment in an impossible shout." "She exits the tavern." "Runs along the road that is suddenly deserted." "Descends precipitous steps." "Runs to the gladiators' gym." "And immediately, in the gym she ecstatically offers herself to the wanted oppression." "Foreseen." "The gigantic gladiator grabs her from behind." "He holds her strongly." "One of his hands, passing under an arm, takes possession of an uncovered breast." "Meanwhile, from the front, the other aggressor finds no resistance from her hand lowered for defence against the furious harassment of his tongue, of his mouth." "The colossus, insinuating imperatively his left knee, forces Clodia to open her thighs." "She hears the laugh, like a silent sob, choking her mouth." "She feels her buttocks contract and stretch." "Spreading." "SCENE 15 OLD TOWN CENTRE ROAD." "EXTERIOR NIGHT." "The movie camera goes, literally, to catch up with the steps of our protagonist who walks at night along the deserted street of the old town." "A procedure both decisive and unsteady." "The solemn staggering proper to some drunks." "So, the camera searches for Clodia's full length figure and finally fixes on her from a quite low point of view." "And so, she towers even more with her usual excess." "She wears a black, velvet dress, close-fitting and down to her feet." "Very austere." "Now she extends her arm and leans against the wall of a building to remedy the more serious uncertainty of her steps." "Deep in her eyes, the characteristic, elusive glare." "In her throat, one can make out a sort of calming rage." "So, just at that moment, on the pavement, a foot of hers touches a white, half-opened envelope with a card barely jutting out." "By instinct, Clodia stoops to pick it up but, surreally, the envelope flees, slides away, and stops one metre ahead." "Without showing surprise, Clodia takes a step." "She stoops once more and again the same thing happens." "Guided by an invisible wire, the envelope leads Clodia to the locked front door of the building." "And here, it lets itself be picked up." "So, stooped as in an act of worship she notices the lower edge of the front door opening." "Clodia crosses the dark threshold." "And when her figure is completely absorbed by the darkness, silently, the front door closes." "SCENE 16 HALL OF AN ANCIENT PALAZZO." "INTERIOR NIGHT." "Darkness." "Then, a mysterious half-light." "An initiation approaches." "Finally, an enormous web blocking entirely access to the hall." "An hand and a gesture imperatively suspended, lead Clodia as a neophyte." "Towards the simulation of a mystery." "Towards an event that closes a vision." "The mysterious usher brings near the edge of the thin cane with a burning wick." "The implement held is one once used to light the altar's candles in church." "And he burns the oscillating barrier." "So, through the wide gap he makes he can introduce his guest, going before her." "The scanning movement, icily liturgical, large purple, velvet flowers, woven with fluttering light, metallic lace, crown his forehead, above his thoroughly curly hair." "And the long, satin, azure, peacock dress that binds his elastic figure from feet to breast height sanctions the nature of an ambiguous and impudent elegance, precious and deceiving." "Clodia still holds that letter." "Crossing that edge, she ends up in a wide hall that has a sumptuous, though crumbling architecture." "Old, corroded mirrors and faded brocade tapestries." "Friezes and golden frames now border surfaces with bad plaster which once, however, shone with great paintings." "Clodia sees in a corner, at the bottom, another solid web blocking another dark and open access, with no door." "Her look is dilated and absorbed." "Her step expresses an ecstatic grace and a sort of devoted impulse." "Quickly, her eyes decipher details and recompose them in a stunning scene." "In the centre of the austere hall, with its large barred windows, on the inlaid floor, is almost an island or a surreal rock of burning candles." "They are many, different, each one placed by itself or in groups on trays and plates of different shapes and sizes." "Made of metal, glass, ceramic..." "Glowing at various heights and without apparently obeying any prepared image, they provoke a luminous effect of intense fascination." "Clodia... stops." "Stares at the presences who live in that place." "Who are they?" "Fools?" "Actors who madly come alive in front of their only fated spectator, that is, in front of her?" "Or maybe they are just unexpected mental evocations?" "The crowd of her unexplainable dream." "It seems to her that they live now the culminating moment of their respective existences, or the exaltation of their destinies, for the first time... and for the umpteenth time." ""Am I one of them?"" "Her thought floats, lost..." "in a metaphysical serenity." "Clodia feels that a riddle is proposed to her, of an eternal, mutual unmasking." "That she has been enticed, led to the absolute space of language." "But not for a trick." "For a mysterious and pleasing return homewards." "Now, she takes the written cardboard from the envelope." "Skims over the handwriting, minute and precise." "But she doesn't stop to look at the situation where she is housed." "So, that celebrant, that partner of hers takes from the table, where are also two wonderful crystal glasses and a silver basket containing a bottle of expensive champagne, a book." ""Imaginary Lives" by Marcel Schwob." "And with priestly calm, he begins to tear up some pages." "One can see that he chooses the pages concerning the lives of persons there present." "Clodia looks at the peacock." "Its leg is held with a small, silver chain." "The words and the voice of Herostratus are already modulating a sort of paranoid, superhuman hymn." "And Clodia, in fact..." "sees Herostratus." "Sees Septima." "Sees Schwob." "Herostratus is tied to a torture mechanism constructed with glacial mirrors." "Barbed ones." "He's bound with a bloody tunic." "Tormented by the torture, he, however, gushes over his own sacrilegious pride." "Inebriates himself in his great loneliness." "Glorifies himself with his own martyrdom." "And shouts:" ""My action has had, as its only cause, the passion for glory and the joy of listening to the pronunciation of my name." "And under pain of death, if from today on, for centuries, you want to pronounce it." "But who cares!" "A constant and eternal murmuring will float forever this incomparable name, Herostratus." "It's me, I am Herostratus, son of fire." "Only Herostratus can crown Herostratus." "Because he is the son of his own work and his work is the essence of the world." "No one is my equal." "Only I know the secret of the way upwards." "Tongues of fire rise." "They cannot make me confess the unspeakable." "What kind of simple and moral requirement is the one that forces whoever knows the truth to reveal it?" "No." "Who knows the truth cannot reveal it." "It would sin against life, inducing to reject it." "My soul is the purest, the driest, the most aflame." "It was me, really me!" "I saw!" "I know." "By the light of the sacred torch," "I embraced the terrible cone of the erect breasts." "I embraced with my two hands the divine stone." "I took only the papyrus where Heraclitus had written his verses." "Read them." "And knew everything." "Immediately I yelled..." "Yelled, The fire!" "The fire!" "I yelled..." "and I yell still." "The bluish flame rises towards the ebony ceiling." "The stone cone marked with lunar gilt." "Artemis herself reflects the blaze." "And I..." "I stood there in that brightness." "I shouted my name!" "Shouted it, surrounded by night."" "Not far away..." "Septima, the enchanter." "The palms of her hands burnished gold and her fingertips painted." "Over her eyes, her oily lids flicker softly." "She stands near her sister's grave, just buried." "At just sixteen." "Before man ever breathed her scent." "The gravestone is narrow like the body contained, wrapped in bandages." "Septima put on her breast a wreath of flowers and sprinkles it with liquid from an ampoule of alabaster." "At the foot of the corpse, there's the slowly dying flame of an oil lamp." "Septima lies near the grave of Fenissa." "She cries and pushes her face into the wreath." "Then, she raises her head and her passion bursts." "The tiny lamp, illuminating the first hours of death, is extinguished." "The thread of your necklace is broken and the golden grains are scattered around your neck." "Nothing about us now is yours." "Now, the hawk-headed one possesses you." "Listen to me, since you have the power of bringing my words." "Go to the cell you know and implore Anteros." "Implore the God Hathor." "Implore the one whose body was dismembered and brought by sea in a chest to Biblos." "Sister of mine, have pity on an unknown pain." "By the seven stars of the magicians of Caldea," "I beseech you, receive my spell." "Have Sestilio be consumed with love for me." "May he burn in the night." "He must search for me near your grave, oh, Fenissa." "Or bring us both to the dark and potent abode." "Beseech Anteros to chill our breath if he refuses Eros." "Fragrant death, embrace the libation of my voice." "A few moments... and then, magically, the bound figure rises." "Her teeth are exposed." "She moves, walks and finally disappears into the dark doorway, beyond the web, without it breaking." "Septima stands near the grave." "Her mysterious moves, like an imperceptible dance, make her seem now as a bird, now as a unique plant." "She offers her throat to Ade's wind that starts suddenly to blow." "Her long turquoise tunic floats like the lightest sail." "Clodia's gaze is increasingly smooth, always flexible to the soft and unvarying flow of the scene." "And now, from the opening, where Fenissa ventured, Sestilio appears, wakened from his deathly sleep." "His body has volume and weight, and ruptures, advancing, the screen of the spider's web." "He comes to Septima." "Kneels down at her side." "Finally, the enchantress can place her painted lips on the lifeless mouth in such way that reanimates." "Sestilio has his hands bound by bandages." "However, he raises and moves them toward Septima's hips and then onto her breast, recovering the frustrated memory of caresses." "So, Septima feels life escaping." "Like a bubble." "After Herostratus and Septima," "Clodia see Marcel Schwob." "Her gaze increasingly becomes similar to an open sky that allows an invasion, but retains nothing." "Clodia decodes the filigree of that static image on the armchair by the side of a precious Viennese desk." "She hooks the bright eyes, acutely, intent on spying the escape of the eternal hours." "She sees him, his hand still suspended over the paper which has just written a sentence." "She notices he is imperceptibly smiling, in rereading it, with the voice of a very, old child." ""I remember no more my face." "Yet I'm afraid of my hands."" "Schwob releases his suspended gesture." "He watches the other people in the hall, as if they were figures he had precisely placed, defining and animating them." "His vague smile becomes just a little more marked, while, looking at Clodia, he murmurs:" ""Eternity becomes stratified in this room." "The dead return to suffocate the living and I ... am the great sheik of knowledge and grimoires." "The passive adventurer."" "Then his eye slid quietly to the little figure of the Tonkinese servant who is preparing the usual morphine." "He prepares for the ritual." "His face colours slightly." "It becomes somewhat his golden mask." "Almost abruptly, the camera cicatrices the scene into a scan of details, composed according to a meticulous painting, never casual, nor formalistic, while short camera movements harmonize them." "So, the letter that Clodia lets slip from her fingers;" "the hand of the chamberlain taking the bottle of champagne and filling carefully two crystal glasses." "A sudden and unjustified leap of the peacock and then the hand of Clodia receiving the glass and ceremoniously raising it into the light hint of a toast." "In the meantime, the chamberlain had begun to speak with a distant voice, veiled with lucid irony, he repeats the text of the letter:" ""Dear Sir, it frequently happens we are unknown and strangers to ourselves and our identity travels, so to speak, incognito." "What a strange effect then." "We suddenly wonder:" "what does "ourselves" mean?" "Who are we?" "Perhaps we're something more than an image?" "Something inside us?" "Some modifications to us of which we became aware?" "Yet our "I", of which we are aware, isn't that just an image, too?" "Something outside of us, something exterior?" "Sure." "We have of man an image we have constructed starting from ourselves and we apply it to ourselves... to understand ourselves." "Just like that!" "Isn't it the height of absurdity?" "So, it happens, without knowledge of our own will and even more so without hers, we have the opportunity to see her... and, if you will, to catch her in all the nakedness of her secret." "That is, we recognized her." "And identified her." "We want to return her to herself, so, as you can well understand, from today she is no longer able to ignore herself, nor deny herself."" "Clodia stares at him." "Without showing surprise or upset." "She has finished the champagne." "The hand movement, with which she returns the glass, has an exhaustion and a perfection that are outside of life." "The chamberlain's gaze instigates her to contemplate once more the characters inhabiting that place." "Clodia can feel their incessant vibrating, their unconsummated and perfect simulation." "The man nods to Clodia towards the doorway where they entered." "Eerily, there's no more trace of the spider's web." "Clodia moves along with him who says to her:" ""There are two opposite streets that rejoin each other under the arch of a door where is written" ""The instant."" "These two opposite streets are in fact only one." "An eternity separates them." "SCENE 19 DWELLING OF THE TWO CLODIA." "INTERIOR DAYLIGHT." "As if searching constantly for an unattainable peak or pushed forward only by the thirst for suffering." "Time flows imperceptibly, unbounded by any bank." "The apartment seems a place out of this world." "Through closed windows, or veiled by the awnings, the incomprehensible speech of day is filtered, but, however, it passes." "Suffused light, soft shadows." "Shadows dense or light, then clear or floating." "Now it seems like afternoon." "The first image we see, brutally bright, is the perfect, gleaming ass of Clodia's sister forcibly spread by the hands of the guest." "The deep fissure relaxes with a shudder and unlocks, between the gorgeous hemispherical buttocks, the dark mallow-coloured hollow." "Then we see, vibrating and deranged, the tongue of the girl, that seems to measure the electricity contained in Clodia's palm and fingers, whose hand, through the maliciously tense fingers, simulates a sort of campy gesture of panic for the proud assault of that tongue" "and the intention to keep above all, away from the mouth." "But, at the same time, through her calculated trepidation for what she is defending between her spread thighs, she reveals more lubricious intentions and finally exposes, instead of rejection, the game of arousing the mouth's savagery," "the better to lead her sister's furious tongue to the target." "Everywhere in the house are messy traces and signs of a frenzy that does not wish to blow over." "The harsh light that wants to coexist with the shadows allude to a sharp sensation of obscenity ." "A violated liturgy." "The tight close-up of Clodia who laughs silently, while tears of pleasure course down from her eyes." "The detail of her hand holding a dildo adorned at the base with a great clump of coloured feathers." "The guest's face, that of the sister... the soft slide of the camera onto the figures to the man's hands who is masturbating himself and the girl at the same time." "So, a voice-over comes from the ironic voice of Clodia who says:" ""They presented a monster in a fairground booth." "Admire it, they're saying." "Yet, first of all, be wary of it." "Be on your guard against ecstasy." "Because he is really beautiful."" "A graceful, short and haemorrhagic laugh thrills even more the other Clodia's face." "Immediately, Clodia bends over to kiss her, laughing as well." "With her hands she strokes the two lovers' genitals." "The man's voice-over says:" ""I'm in love with a nightmare and am the incarnation of infernal gaiety."" "Excited from the pleasure, the man, maybe, must feel like dying and it's as if he grasps a naked and pulsating heart." "A desire to sing distends his throat." "Then, passionately, gently and authoritatively he arranges Clodia." "And in synchronization, with an elastic and lazy naturalness also the other woman moves and adjusts." "Searching for a new figure." "Another situation of this cohabitation of three, with neither plan nor reason." "Justified and fomented only by the violence of the game and the meaninglessness of desire." "It's possible the guest has been living with them for weeks." "Or the time passed is not so short, but dilated, madly, in anguish." "This scene represents a peak." "It's surprising yet somehow absurd." "So impudently chiseled in its extreme theatricality." "The three characters are always seen apart." "By meticulous cuts and the calculated carving up of the images." "Solemnly, narcissistically, arrogantly the man enters and declares:" ""So, that's clear." "Whoever cannot speak within 5 seconds will be eliminated."" "The liturgical meaning could be this:" "to give to a generic moment, imposed arbitrarily through gaming, the character of eternity, fixed at the peak of awareness." "To put oneself as table, as pawns, as player of the game." "The guest solemnly holds a stopwatch." "And is ready to press it to set racing, the hands." ""You've to start, Clodia."" "Like a simulacrum of Clodius, his figure sanctions perfectly that emphasized theatricality ." ""Go!"" "And Clodia immediately:" ""To play the game of reality, without having even a real card."" "The guest resets the stopwatch." "Then, restarts turning to the other Clodia:" ""It's your turn." She says:" ""I heard that there is no way back from hell."" "Now it's the turn of the conductor." "Secure and detached he pronounces his statement:" ""Time is the same thing as desire."" "The first session of this unusual challenge concludes." "No one was mistaken." "So, it will restart with Clodia." "A close-up of the sister and the male voice pointing out:" ""Another round." "It's again your turn."" "Clodia has a light smile." ""Two ways are offered to me:" "that of the outside infinity and the of the infinity within."" "A lucid flowing." "Crazy." "Close-up of the reset stopwatch and then again the man's voice commanding:" ""Come on, go!"" ""The head is nothing by itself, but you possess two heads."" "Overcoming the second test." "So, the guest now with this new sentence." ""Sometimes my eyes bleed," "But never my heart!"" "In the knowledge, of exposing his own existence on the border of an unfathomable loneliness." "It follows that there's no more limit for the purpose of cheating." "And yet:" ""I'll go alone inside my self." "You can always find me there."" "Clodia's voice is the one directed, mysteriously toward the solution." "Saying this, she turns her gaze on her sister... who, this time, says nothing." "She finds or searches no more for a defined thought within the short regular time limit." "The guest's voice convicts her." ""Eliminated."" "For the first time, the scene widens gathering together the three actors." "A linear panoramic accompanies the other Clodia to the bed where she sits." "The challenge continues with two." "The figures return to isolation, each in their own ambiguous steadiness, available to the fake tortures imposed on them by the sadistic swinging of the image that holds them." "The hands of the stopwatch jump, but stop... after only two seconds." "Because the guest declares:" ""So long as my friends do not die" "I'll not speak of death."" "In Clodia's image, the enigmatic irony becomes excruciating." "Turning to her rival she pronounces:" ""Evil is nothing." "This you know, like the eagle with its prey, one must grasp." "A brief movement of the dolly zooms piously upon her." "The sister on the bed watching her." "As pure spectator she knows the rules of the game do not pre-exist." "They are gradually invented, above all by Clodia." "With a sovereign discretion on the basis of truth." "As he has to do the man sets in motion the consecrated mechanism." "And for the third time he too asserts:" ""Actually it's true, everything we do is innocent."" "It should be Clodia's turn, but she is silent." "Unflappable, she leaves the voice of the other to its counting." ""4..." "5... 6..."" "Eliminated." "Clodia makes no reaction." "Quietly, she lets the winner exceed, sealing his match with the assertion of a true and real dogma:" ""We are not Nature." "We are Art!"" "So, Clodia rises." "Leaves her violet cape." "With sovereignty she goes to Clodius' simulacrum." "With a decisive push she spills him." "Throwing him to the floor." "The theatricality of the scene doesn't decay... rather.." "it leaps towards its apotheosis." "With one knee on the guest's lower back," "Clodia makes a sweeping and imperious gesture towards her sister to take the dildo thrown on the bed and pass it to her." "The girl obeys." "She approaches her, brandishing high, the tool in her hand." "She offers it to her as in a military or clerical exchange." "There's a sense of vertiginous parody of obscenity and the sacred, but in the continuation of a sectarian and austere ritual of truth." "Never of derision." "Finally, Clodia lifts the veil that overshadows the buttocks of her subordinate, in a scene masterfully petrified." "With similar imperious gestures, she denudes them." "So, he quivers." "Excited and blasphemous." "Yearning for that prize and that martyrdom." "Clodia, sacredly..." "rapes him." "SCENE 25 CITY STREETS." "EXTERIOR NIGHT." "A black dissolve opens on the natural blackness of night." "Another night." "We can see Clodia driving her car through empty streets during a time that seems eradicated from life." "Without a precise direction, yet following an obligatory path." "A secret one." "At times, like phantoms or ghosts, isolated presences appear, immobile or fleeing." "The light of the street lamps create putrefying halos." "Suddenly, not that localised and distant, we hear a shout." ""If I die, yell my name."" "Clodia continues driving, traversing the night." "Magnetizing the images." "Annulling them all in her own, just as their meanings." "In tight close-up, her look has the same nature as that black void and that senseless, piercing shout, recently heard." "SCENE XXVI HOUSE OF EGNATI." "AECUS CORINTHUS." "INTERIOR, NIGHT." "It starts with a close-up of Clodia." "Classical." "Perfectly cut." "She's laughing, maybe drunk." "Made up like the queen of a brothel, as a profligate parody of Ceres." "She's in the company of today's lover, Egnazio and with other friends of the same coinage." "Beautiful, violent, vulgar." "And coarse." "They too are all dressed parodistically, as required by the rules of a Lectisternius." "one as Mercury, one as Mars, as Jupiter's, as Apollo..." "And the very girls of that brothel obscenely mime the images of goddesses." "Garlanded with flowers, sprinkled with unguents, inebriated, excited." "Clodia lets herself be touched, whispered to, kissed..." "Not sparing caresses nor kisses on faces and nakedness." "The scene is codified in a stillness, intense and distant... like an ancient fresco." "Life is filthy." "And even frightening" "There's everything." "Assassination, pain, beauty..." "Sickness..." "Death..." "You should..." "know everything." "And then begin." "You must be able to truly understand, or else you'll fall." "Horses will distance you from danger." "Trains bring you back." "Paintings bring a deadly pang." "Hung over a man you have loved and maybe have killed, in his bed." "Flowers envelope your heart as a funeral drape," "Because a child has been buried among flowers." "Music incites the terror of repetition." "Where the streets diverge lovers exchange promises..." "And the tavern is for thieves." "Contemplation leads to prejudice." "And beds are fields where newborns fight a lost battle." "These things you must know.." "You know." "You, you know." "First, me..." "A ghost of me, after." "Angels..." "We live by killing them." "SCENE XXVIII CATULLUS' HOUSE;" "BEDROOM." "INTERIOR, DAYLIGHT." "The scene opens, dissolving onto a close-up Catullus' room." "With eyes full of love, he looks at Clodia who lies on the bed." "She's naked and holds in one hand graciously, a brightly coloured bird." "She plays with it, teasing its small beak with her fingers, letting it brush against her erect nipples... or her lips with the mischievous tip of her tongue." "And even, in fact... confusing and enmeshing it in her scented, downy pubes." "Near the bed, seated on a stool, is a young maid looking after a small cage in which flutter two other birds similar to the one Clodia holds in her hand." "Catullus, motionless, cannot look away." "And finally he says:" ""You ask how many of your kisses, Lesbia," "Would more than satisfy me" "Great as the sum of Libyan sand lying in resin-producing Cyrene" "Between the oracle of torrid Jupiter and the holy urn of ancient Battus." "And how many, in the silence of the night," "Stars watch over our furtive loves." "If you kiss me with so many kisses" "That the inquisitive cannot count them" "Nor an evil tongue bewitch us" "Would more than satisfy mad Catullus."" "SOCIAL CENTRE." "INTERIOR, NIGHT." "An hotel of the 17th century for mendicants and pilgrims today reduced to a community social centre." "The architectural prestige of this place, more than the degradation of time, appears extraordinarily deformed by its current use." "Among ruined stuccoes, marble gravestone with busts and statues of cardinals and popes, are gaming tables, pool tables, table tennis, two pinball machines and a miserable bar for the poor, outcasts or even the crazy." "So, in the context of this scene is something monstrous and lacerated, recalling the photography of Diane Arbus, especially as now is added a festive air, somehow vital." "As a sort of impromptu off-season carnival." "Two or three children and a couple of adults, have on their face and heads rough paper masks." "Some voluminous lower class women in the company of some pensioners are drinking, sitting at tables with the unintelligible look of satisfied wellness." "Festoons of coloured paper have been hung on the walls and dangle from the neon lamps." "Two itinerant musicians with clarinet and accordion are playing classical songs, of 20 or 30 years ago, while two couples are dancing next to the pool tables." "However, the more confusing and absurd element is the presence here of the two Clodias." "We see them sitting at a small table engaged in a game of chess, one against the other." "They wear two identical dresses, very beautiful, '50 style." "Their elegance insinuates, with a highly surreal, ironic force, the suspicion of a macabre dressing." "A man with empty gaze sits silently beside them, and cannot take his eyes off Clodia." "She has an easy smile which doesn't change on her thin lips." "You could say, he's coerced by the image he stares at." "Meanwhile, a man in his fifties, cheerfully, comes to invite the second Clodia to dance." "She accepts." "And Clodia, left alone, crops the images with her deep gaze, unfathomable, that moves so slowly." "Then, her eyes linger on that enchanted admirer." "So, she begins to speak with him." "It seems she is playing cruelly with him." "Making fun of or confusing him, without reason." "She tells him things that you cannot say if they are invented or true." "And he listen to her motionlessly, always with that same expression." "Clodia says:" ""That one is my sister." "She never leaves the house." "She doesn't like it." "She might get lost." "Only such closed spaces keep her quiet." "You know, she's afraid of streets, landscapes..." "Tonight is an exception because it's our birthday." "We were born on the same day." "However, this place is fine closed like this, without windows." "We've both the same name." "Clodia." "These identical dresses I bought this very day for this anniversary." "Would you like to hear me?" "Therefore, I'll confess to you something very... intimate." "You know, we are lovers." "and both of us have as lover our brother." "Does it seem impossible?" "Why?" "But it's true." "I, for love of him, poisoned my husband." "She, for the same reason abandoned hers."" "She bursts into unexpected laughter." "She looks at her silent interlocutor, then at her dancing sister." "She smiles." "Suddenly, her expression re-finds its gravity, such gravity..." "In such a way, now, tender." "She turns to the same one, but it's like she's talking with another 'herself' or nobody." "Slowly with a low and unvarying voice, she says:" ""The desire should rise against itself that produces its own shadow or monkey and find a strange artificial force that vegetates in the void within its own lack."" "A masked one comes, to hand out a glass for a toast." "Clodia takes it." "Raising the glass, the mask grotesquely looks for motivation but cannot find one." "And is only able to gurgle a..." "Two others arrive." "They play at imitating him." "They multiply the same pathetic and repeated sound." "Wheezing..." "They cruelly laugh and drink." "Then, Clodia acts like them." "But more intensely, in a macabre counterpoint." "And the movie camera converges on her." "SCENE XXXI CATULLUS' HOUSE:" "TRICLINIUM." "INTERIOR, DUSK." "It's night time and there develops a classical banquet." "Catullus is surrounded by his friends, lying on an accubito in the large triclinium of his lavish house." "The most beautiful slaves are, as always, dedicated to the most delicate services." "Pouring out wine or cutting up the food." "And they do it, indeed, with graceful movements." "They wear intensely coloured dresses and have long, bejewelled hair." "A guest makes a toast, raising his silver cup that a fine engraver has decorated with gesticulating skeletons." "A blind Citharede, assisted by a so beautiful boy, recites verses with the skilful and deep chords of his instrument." "Here are his words:" ""Every person who disappears drags with him the universe." "At the same time, all is suppressed..." "All." "Supreme justice that legitimises and rehabilitates death." "Let us leave then without regrets, as nothing will survive us since our consciousness is the one and only reality." "Abolishing it, everything is abolished, even if we know it's not true, because in reality nothing accepts to follow us, nothing condescends to leave with us."" "Measured movements of the dolly and panning, structure the scene with a constant rhythm, sinuous and harmonious." "Counterpointed and spelt out by the heraldic fixity of the close-ups and of the precious details." "The friend, sitting on his right, smiling and with a hint of malice, addresses Catullus" "Saying to him:" ""She goes from the baths to the stone cells." "And in her eyes there's always the same shining insolence." "She knows every cellar where you can play dice." "She waits for passers-by and then lures them." "Poor Catullus." "Enough of illusions."" "The poet look at him with an easy smile, pours some more wine in his cup and caressing with his other hand the hips of the woman stretched out to his left." "She bursts out laughing, childishly." "So, Catullus answers:" ""Right, it's true." "Poor Catullus." "Enough of illusions." "If she dies, believe me, everything will be lost." "Your days of joy are now over." "When you ran wherever your love wanted." "Loved as a lover has ever been." "Then were born all those games of love." "which you desired and she did not deny." "Your days of joy are now over." "Now she desires you no more:" "and you do not desire; control yourself do not chase, like a wretch, she who flees, but with all your will, resist, not give in." "Goodbye, my love." "Catullus will not concede:" "he will not look for you, nor court you by force." "But you will suffer at not being desired." "Look at yourself!" "What will it hold for you, life?" "Who'll come for you?" "Who will think you pretty?" "Whom will you love?" "And whom will you kiss?" "And who will bite your lips?"" "As he speaks, the look on his face and the lucid tone of his words become more passionate through the lure of a yearning melancholy." "In another part of the triclinium we see an elderly matron lying between two young diners." "With a sarcastic rigidity she turns to them, saying:" ""Ingenuous you are!" "You should kneel at the Tarpeian Temple and sacrifice a golden heifer to Juno the day you happen upon a woman with chaste lips." "There are just few deserving to touch the bandages of Ceres." "Few are they whose kisses would not frighten their own fathers."" "No other... again... perhaps will live... like me, from the time of Eve." "I'd like for you to sing it." "It's the song you always sing." "For myself, I'm a wonder, I am" "Created, I don't know, if one... or two." "Please." "For myself, I am a wonder, I am" "Created, I don't know," "If one..." "Or two." "as double person or singular monster." "I'd like for you to sing it." "Nevertheless, I am happy." "Because a creature of the Lord who loves me." "It would have been nice if you had sung naked in front of me." "I like you very much today." "I find you beautiful." "More beautiful." "Have mercy, Clodia!" "Sing standing up." "Sing with all your voice." "Shout!" "Then, you will come to lie down next to me." "Cry no more." "You should stop your crying." "I needed you to be crazy." "I needed it to avoid death." "SCENE 33 PARK MOUNT CELIO." "EXTERIOR, AT SUNRISE." "By dawn's light, an empty landscape with ruins evoking suddenly and violently something ambiguous and excluded." "Waits, humiliated and solitary." "Complicity." "Painful rites, stealthy." "We see Clodia taking from the hands of a man, a few negotiated coins." "And then, silently, giving herself to him." "There's in them both exhaustion and something of a wild mechanism." "So, the relation subtracts any preconception commercial, passionate, or any other." "It's as if she's progressing through an inhuman inertia of her own." "To an absence of herself and her own language." "The tragedy finishes in a pure and harmonious senselessness." "The man strangles Clodia." "And he steals the little money he gave her as payment." "She has no possibility of defence." "A movement or a cry." "Or she doesn't want one." "In the depth of the wide open eyes of Clodia, or seemingly held between her half-closed lips is the fixity of that instant, still flashing." "That extreme peak and mocking feeling." "Tragedy..." "Laughter..." "Exaltation." "The murderer drags the body a few steps away." "Barely hiding it in the bushes." "Just behind a ruin." "But perhaps marking more evidently the sordid and miserable nature of the event." "Then, he leaves, taking his time." "And without turning back to look." "Background music is heard, while the fade to black seems to mournfully celebrate the event." "The bright reflection has always the 'possible' as object." "The 'impossible' however is disordered." "An aberration." "A disorder that only despair and passion can produce..." "Provoke." "A similar disorder aspires to death." "And the one who is marked by a tragic destiny should, somehow, become blinded." "They are the only one who can strive for the 'impossible'." "And one thing is certain:" "What is impossible, cannot be well-defined." "Subtitles:" "Marooned2, Corvusalbus, LazarusGordon"