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Title: Total Eclipse (1995)
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| Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
| Leonardo DiCaprio | ... | ||
| David Thewlis | ... | ||
| Romane Bohringer | ... | ||
| Dominique Blanc | ... |
Isabelle Rimbaud
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Félicie Pasotti | ... |
Isabelle, as a child
(as Felicie Pasotti Cabarbaye)
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Nita Klein | ... |
Rimbaud's Mother
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| James Thierrée | ... |
Frederic
(as James Thiérrée)
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Emmanuelle Oppo | ... |
Vitalie
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Denise Chalem | ... |
Mrs. Maute De Fleurville
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| Andrzej Seweryn | ... |
Mr. Maute De Fleurville
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Christopher Thompson | ... |
Carjat
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| Bruce Van Barthold | ... |
Aicard
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| Christopher Chaplin | ... |
Charles Cros
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| Christopher Hampton | ... |
The Judge
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Mathias Jung | ... |
Andre
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In 1871, Paul Verlaine (1844-1896), an established poet, invites boy genius Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891) to live with Paul and his young pregnant wife, Mathiltde, in her father's home in Paris. Rimbaud's uncouth behavior disrupts the household as well as the insular society of French poets, but Verlaine finds the youth invigorating. Stewed in absinthe and resentment, Verlaine abuses Mathiltde; he and Rimbaud become lovers and abandon her. There are reconciliations and partings with Mathiltde and partings and reconciliations with Rimbaud, until an 1873 incident with a pistol sends one of them to prison. Codas dramatize the poets' final meeting and last illnesses. Written by <jhailey@hotmail.com>
This movie is not for the faint of heart or the conventional taste. It's not a fantasy.
Like the real-life characters upon which the movie is based, TE is eccentric and poetical. French poet Rimbaud, who wrote almost everything he wrote as a teenager, has been admired by some of the most eccentric creative people of the last century. He was a very unusual teenager, being some kind of genius, some kind of lowlife, and a runaway. His poetry digs into and portrays life with discomforting and sometimes painful and sometimes ecstatic detail. His is the muse which revels in the squalor of creation.
Many people will dislike this film because the two main characters, Rimbaud and Verlaine, are bisexual and not at all stereotypical. Both of them are snotty and selfish and violent and often despicable. (As Shakespeare probably was at times, but you'll never see him portrayed in movies that way.) These are not Robert Frost poets. These are worm and scat and sex and drug and rock'n'roll and get-down-and-get-dirty poets.
Past that, it's the story of a great, if brief, flowering love ... the kind of love story you'd expect for people who live and breathe life in the way great alternaculture poets must.
Eternity is where the sunlight mixes with the water. And the penetrating movie mixes with the prepared mind.