Original subtitles

Chris was a poet, so attentive and willing to live his own life.

So alive, so tender, so manly...

And I loved him.

I met him in the club where I worked.

He got his band there too.

For a little money he sang his poems.

Yes, because his songs were poems.

Our love was a free love and without hang-ups...

Without exclusive ties, without absolute constraints...

And we lived our sexuality without limits.

Every evening a beautiful lady came to the nightclub. Very elegant.

Her companions gave the impression of being bodyguards.

I think she was a very important woman.

I knew only that her name was Helen.

She sat at her table, in silence.

She never took her eyes off me whilst I did my striptease.

And slowly I got used to her...

And I even finished by desiring her eyes full of beseeching desire.

Perhaps I never really grew up and never stopped playing with things,

with others, with myself...

The trouble is I have always found it all very exciting.

The small and the big things in life...

Feelings, passions, vices...

May I?

Please, take a seat.

Thank you.

Waiter!

You, young lady, are very beautiful and very good.

Thank you.

You are really... really kind.

Cheers. Mm... good!

And to think every time I saw you enter I said: "What airs she gives herself."

"She must be a princess or a woman of high finance...

"or someone in politics, she must be an important woman."

And I've always wanted to be a friend to someone important.

But in fact, at this table we are all important.

For an important person I'd be willing to be... Yes, well...

A lover? - Yes, a lover.

Even if this person were a woman?

Of course! Man or woman what's the difference?

You'd better undress, don't you think?

Oh, your hand!

Oh, that sweet sensation.

How hot it is!

Kiss my breasts.

Oh yes! Continue... I like it!

Me, when I make love...

I'd rather be naked. And you?

Skin against skin. What's up?

Don't say my nakedness offends you?

You know you're a very strange woman?

I like you.

Your skin... is like velvet.

Undress! I want you naked.

No! No!!

I thought he was drunk, but he didn't want to talk about it...

And I knew that Chris was another.

Suddenly the city sounded different: it's noises, it's voices.

Wearily I began to feel excluded from everything around me.

As if... As if something in me was being lost day by day.

And yet I struggled. Oh, how I struggled.

Desperately!

I love the sun, the moon, the stars...

I love the sky, the earth, I love the trees, the stones...

I love love.

I love men, I love women,

I love the smell of skin and the warmth of a naked body.

I love life! I love life!

I love life...

I love life...

I love life...

Chris, how much I miss your tenderness.

Your joyful life.

Your desperate existence.

How much I miss your madness!

Chris! - Justine! - Oh, Chris!

Love will come and it will have your eyes.

This love that takes me from morning to night...

Like an old resentment, like a distant dream.

Love will come and it will have your eyes.

And there will be distant memories recovered in time...

like things from another world, by now already lived.

It will be like finding a lost friend.

It will be like finding an old toy.

Love will come and it will have your eyes.

For love, one day or another, has for everyone a look.

And that day I will be happy, like a flower in autumn.

Look, Chris, it's natural that you're tired and basically I'm tired too.

It's ages since we've had a vacation and work is making us short tempered.

Why don't we go and spend some time somewhere?

- Go somewhere to do what? - To start over.

I don't see what there is to start over.

Aren't we in love? - Sure. - Then that's not the point.

Oh, look... - You think it's enough to clear out to solve everything.

No, that won't solve our problems. - Oh, darling, please, don't go.

I didn't mean to upset you. You're right.

Staying or going changes nothing.

The important thing is we love each other.

And that's what counts, right? - Yeah.

Oh yes!

Get undressed. - Yes.

But by now, of Chris, the man that I knew...

The man that I loved... There was nothing left.

He no longer even he wrote his poems...

And evenings, singing in the club, his voice was that of another.

And another was that man who now held me in his arms...

No more warmth, no more love.

And I, on the other hand, need warmth.

And love! Love! Love.

I met Joe at a party at some friends' house.

I was drunk and I decided I would try to forget Chris.

Hey, why not drink? Do like me, I'm already drunk.

Oh, you're bored? Already.

Shall we dance? - Yes, of course, darling.

You know what? I want you.

You waste no time, eh?

What are you doing?

Oh, Chris, how could I have forgotten you?

How was I be able to do without you?

But I desperately tried, so painfully.

Shush...

Would you do it with us both?

Come! Come you too.

Oh, yes, that's it.

More!

Oh, yes. More...

Oh, yes...

But it's precisely because I care about the club. - Then we agree?

Okay, I agree, don't worry.

Let's have a little drink on it. We'll drink to your health.

I must talk to you. - What do you want?

Is it true that I'll soon be sacked?

Is it true? - Who said so? - Those guys over there.

It's true and you don't have the courage to tell me.

For a bit, then I'll take you on under better conditions.

You think you can take or leave me as you please?

Do what you want, if you don't like it. - Of course I don't like it.

Once I've gone you won't see me again.

Do as you please.

Then I'll clear out.

Chris left the club and went away, indifferent to everything.

But I couldn't do without him and decided to follow him...

At the cost of losing my job, the cost of being forced to pay whatever price.

Oh, Chris... you'll never know how much I have loved you!

Before that... for me sexuality had always been a free choice.

Having to prostitute myself for money, in order to survive, you and I.

Filth, vulgarity...

Oh, Chris... how much it has cost me.

And I had not even a refuge in you.

Even homosexuality ceased to be a game...

And it became, for me, a means of escape.

Oh, Chris... how much I loved you!

Chris was more and more distant and inaccessible...

And I on the other hand had so much need of love.

Ingrid came to see me, an old school friend,

with whom I had shared my first adolescent wonders.

And with her I found the tenderness of the past.

The hot anxiety of first torments... when man...

was still an unknown enemy to discover and avoid.

How long since we've met, Justine. It must be three years?

Maybe even four, I don't remember.

It's quite some time since I told myself: "I have to go find Justine".

But then, for one reason or another, I never found the time to do it.

I wanted to see you, spend some time with you, to remember many things...

An inexplicable desire.

I often caught myself thinking about the hours we spent together...

The things we discovered together.

I've never forgotten, Justine. - Me neither, Ingrid.

Those were good times, right? - Yeah.

Everything for us was an exciting game.

- Do you still like to play? - Yes.

We didn't have hair then, remember?

Sure.

Unfortunately, the past can't be brought back. - Why not?

Because then we were little girls full of curiosity...

So many hidden desires and the will to live.

Now, however, we know everything there is to know...

That life has taught us.

But it was nice between us then. Remember, Justine?

Remember all those stolen caresses.

Wasn't it so?

Why did you do that?

What do you want to prove?

I am a child.

Just like then.

A little girl.

Feel it? Just like then.

You feel it too.

You're so soft.

Justine, my love...

I have never forgotten you, Justine.

Yes, Ingrid...

Lower down!

Lower down!

More people every night. - We'll do great things together.

Ah, the two of us together. - Is something wrong? - Sure.

Yes, but something's missing.

I think you should take Chris back. - That's it, eh?

Oh, don't get mad. Do it for me, huh?

We won't die of hunger from it...

Justine...

It's only...

Well? Hey!

Kiss me.

It's only to do a favour for a friend. Only for this.

Oh, Chris! - Why is he always mean to me that idiot?

Shush, quiet.

I wouldn't want you to feel right now that I've fixed everything? Love...

And how have you fixed everything? - Ah ha... it's a secret. Don't worry.

I want to know how you did it. - All right, if you insist.

I pleaded that he take you on again. - By going to bed with him.

Don't be silly! You know I'd never betray you with Robert.

I've no need to go to bed to get something from a man.

You know I love you.

You know I could never do that, I love you too much, darling.

Now go, Chris.

Those hateful scenes of stupid jealousy...

and not for love.

Because now, I was sure,

there was no longer any love in Chris' eyes.

Feeling oneself an object to be thrown away at any moment, to be reclaimed.

To claim it with one's own folly...

Humiliated, I looked for revenge.

And I found it retreating again into pale adolescent gardens...

with the passion and anger

of a woman who saw the collapse of her own dreams.

Again, homosexuality was for me ... a quiet place...

in which I anchored my lost soul.

Do you like it? - Yes.

It's nice here. It really is.

You'll see, Chris, it'll soon be just as it was before, I'm sure.

Chris' madness became increasingly evident.

He seemed in the grip of a crazy mystic rage.

And I began to let myself be caught in the vortex of that irrational game...

and to feel a part of it.

And I felt a subtle pleasure at being sacrificed on the altar

of a hallucinatory purification.

Now you will do penance for your sins.

I even thought I had a way out.

Robert was the reason.

Life in the world I knew, among the thoughts I was used to.

Robert loved me as a normal man can love a woman.

You're a wonderful woman, Justine.

I want you.

Wonderful.

But fate does not allow such choices.

And then, even if things had gone differently,

perhaps I wouldn't have done the same and stayed with him.

However, everything had already been decided.

No...

Oh, darling, how stupid you were then,

with that normal, offended petit bourgeois reaction of yours.

But it was only the last glimmer of rationality.

To punish me for having caused the death of Robert,

you looked for another woman but in vain.

What's wrong?

You don't even look at me? Hey, I'm speaking to you...

Stop it!

I tried provocation hoping for an impossible salvation.

And once again, his reaction seemed normal...

although expressed with a crazed theatricality.

Damned! Damned sinners!

But who is to say where the reign of madness begins?

My life dragged on in the most absolute futility, day after day.

I went to see a strange guy. A friend of mine had sent me.

Good morning.

Katy sent me.

She can't come today. - Please sit down.

Can I get you a drink? - Thanks, but right now I'm OK.

As you wish.

You are beautiful, too beautiful...

- Don't you like me? - Yes.

Let me see.

You like it? - Yes.

How beautiful!

Can I get a little better look? - Yes!

It's all here...

Here it is...

And now let's think of you.

No... No! Don't touch me! No...

Hey, I won't eat you, you know?

However, if you like, I can do even that. - Yes...

- Go away! Yes! - All right, but I'm not going for nothing...

I'll even pay!

With me it'll be better! - How dare you? What do you want from me?

Come here, and I'll show you!

Stop laughing!

Something can save you when you're on the slide

and you feel yourself slipping lower and lower...

and you remain inert, enduring the sadness of your body,

fed to the filthiest instincts...

And you consent to the most squalid games,

the most unlikely aberrations...

And accept the violence and endure it. Although at times you enjoy it.

And get a taste for it. And then...

you yourself become an instrument of violence...

against those who feel more helpless.

But what could save me now, if nothing could save Chris?

But now nothing had any importance to me.

I tried desperately to attach myself to any possibility of salvation.

Perhaps the instinct of preservation pleading with whatever motivation

could help me to survive.

I asked help from Ingrid and found her helpful as always.

Only Chris would be able to save me.

But what could save Chris?

Not my love, unfortunately.

His madness was complete now.

And it pushed him inexorably towards destruction,

towards the end.

"Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of a woman and her daughter,

"neither shalt thou take her son's daughter,

"or her daughter's daughter to uncover her nakedness;

"for they are her near kinswomen: it is wickedness.

"Neither shalt thou take a wife

"to her sister, to vex her,

"to uncover her nakedness, beside the other in her life time.

"Also thou shalt not approach unto a woman to uncover her nakedness,

"as long as she is put apart for her uncleanness.

"Thou shalt not lie carnally with thy neighbour's wife,

"defiling thyself with her.

"And thou shalt not let any of thy seed

"pass through the fire to Moloch,

"neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God:

"I am the Lord.

"Thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind: it is abomination.

"Neither shalt thou lie with any beast..."

Chris spent his time reading verses from the Bible.

Indifferent to everyone and everything.

And even my love was now useless, helpless in front of his indifference.

And he was always far away, lost behind his madness.

I tried to lose myself in sex with the help of Ingrid,

but everything is useless, now.

Justine, join us.

Yes.

Get out!

Oh, yes! Yes!

And what is left, if not to follow him...

to hope then... to continue to exist in him?

Chris...

Oh, Chris!

Subtitles: corvusalbus