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| The
Via Crucis of Camille - Crux 2 - Page 13 |
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When
I positioned the camera for the closer look
of Camiille I saw an amazing image. Her expression
could not be more saintly, her breast could
not be more beautiful. As I whipped her I
thought of what I saw through the lens. I
knew how it was going to look, I made sure
her face was always going to be in view.
The whip went across her breasts, she shook
her head back and forth in pain, no longer
fixing her eyes on me. She was looking straight
at the wall, fixing her eyes in a blank point
where she could concentrate her pain.
Part of her training for her previous role
was how to deal with pain for the camera.
If she fixed her eyes on a point, she could
express a lot more than if her eyes were left
to wander.
Camille fixed her eyes on a point where she
could concentrate her emotions. Her pain was
real, maybe not as horribly painful as if
it were a real flogging, but it was real enough.
The whip hit her breasts again. |
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Lyvia
was led to the place of her first punishment,
where a block of wood was used to cut thieves
hands. The wooden contraption was a meter tall.
The woman was made
to kneel in front of it, her wrist were place
on the block of wood and held by metal grills.
Her hands were flattened against the surface
of the wood. Two long pieces of wood were placed
over and under her fingers and tied at both
ends. Held in this position, on her kness, her
hair was chopped off with a knife.
When the preparation
was over, the executioner stood behind her,
whip in hand. The whip was one used for thieves.
A long bull whip.
100 lashes! the order
was given and the executioner began his task.
As the whip fell on the woman's back, thighs,
buttocks and legs, Lyvia couldn't hold her screams.
Her back was quickly showing the welts and thin
marks of blood.
The crowds that grew
fast, were silent, except from some cries of
mercy of one or two women. Blended within the
crowd, the old vendor and the young girl, stood
together. The girl was crying, as the woman
that gave her food, was paying dearly for her
crime.
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As
the whip hit her across the face I could not
avoid wondering if we were going to be doing
this after this evening.
Did I have days? weeks? months? before she
left me for good?
I was sure I didn't have years. She was
determined to go on her way, to move on, to
have a taste of a new life, with new people.
That much I learned when we returned from
NY. Her months in France had changed her.
I saw photographs of her new friends, particularly
one guy with cropped hair. It was the new
scene, the trance parties, the extasis,
the all night dancing. Her 90's experience
was throwing her 60's experience to where
it belonged, to the past.
Camille once commented that she experienced
the 60's. It was during our beginning together,
when the group I formed for the shooting of
the movie got into a 60's mood, listening
to Hendrix, Joplin, Doors, partying with pot
and some of the guys with long hair. Yes,
I could see that. We were reliving the 60's
in the middle of the 90's
A mid life crisis for me perhaps, for Camille
and her friends, a new world. A world of discovery,
as it was for me decades before. But the experience
was short lived. Soon she was out of it and
into her generation's scene and I was no longer
the cool guy, but the old geezer. Too old
to rock and roll but too young to die.
All there was left was this, this moment,
my perverted moment, a moment that trascended
time, generations, genders. It was a moment
as old as humanity.
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As
the whip hit Camille across the face once again,
I saw in her expression what I wanted to get.
The expression of the body in pain, the expression
that was true in a saint of the 3rd century,
and expression that was true in the Maricelli
of the 18th century, an expression that was
true of the Camille of the soon to be 21st century.
The pain of martyrdom trascending time.
I was getting that. I was trasncending the
room, the time, the crisis and experiencing
the moment of Camille's pain. She was expressing
it, she was living it, she was becoming the
character in my script, she was becoming her
fantasy.
And she was beautiful while doing it.
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