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| The
Via Crucis of Camille - Crux 2 - Page 21 |
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I
placed Camille's arms over the cross beam
as its hard surface rested on the back of
her neck and her shoulders. Camille kept her
head lowered, waiting for me to complete the
action.
Maricelli, the character in the script, had
this recurring image of the captured slave
with the wood over his shoulders. She imagined
herself in his position, which was close to
her constant fantasies of the saint about
to be crucified. Camille was representing
both, the saint and Maricelli, fusing them
both into one as I envisioned it.
In the film the escene of Maricelli was going
to fade into her fantasy and back to her.
Camille would play the multiple fantasy characters
as well as Maricelli, so she had to be familiar
with both, the real character and her fantasies.
My idea was set up the escene of the fantasy
in Roman times, with all the props and customes,
while Maricelli is set in Cuba, during the
colonizatino by the Spanish. Two complicated
settings.
I left Camille alone for a moment, to set
a different view of the Camera. |
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Lyvia
regained consciousness with a deep, intense
moan, she didn't have the strenght to scream.
Her body, as tense as it was, it was still trembling
in pain. Lyvia looked at the terrified crowd,
she could see the young girl in front, crying,
held by the old man who could not disguise his
tears.
The torturer appeared
in front of the hanging woman, holding the large
wooden club. He first placed it on top of Lyvia's
feet, where he was to hit, he then raised it
slowly. As he was about to send it crushing
against the woman's feet, the young girl hid
her head against the old man's belly.
The torturer swung
the club down and hit Lyvia's feet with brutal
force, crushing her bones.
Lyvia let out a sharp
scream, raising her head and fainted.
The crowd watched
in terror as Lyvia stopped moving, her feet
bleeding from the crushed toes that opened as
if they were fruit.
The soldier with
the hot iron burned the wounds to stop the bleeding.
The hissing sound of the burning flesh was overwhelmed
by a new scream of Lyvia as she woke up with
the new pain.
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After setting the closer shot, I returned
to Camille to tie her wrists to the crossbar.
I wasn't particularly happy with the set.
I was wishing we were somewhere else, like
the jungle or the forrest in France. But we
were home, in the bedroom and that's where
we had to work.
It's not always easy to do this kind of work
in an open field. There could be people passing
by and it would not be nice to be caught in
the middle of crucifying a beautiful woman.
Besides, the room was intimate, it was only
us, and I didn't have to worry about anything
but what we were doing.
The intention was to go through the mechanics
of the crucifixion, regardless of where we
were. Camille was doing her part and she was
looking good, so that was all that mattered.
I had to live with the room and that was that.
I had to make sure that her motivations were
right. How can you get the message through
someone who doesn't have religion hammered
into her very soul?
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Camille was not raised under religious or conservative ideas. She was free.
When she was half naked and tied up, she was
never freer.
Camille was not from my generation, she was
not exposed to our struggle for true freedom.
She was the fruit of it, she was the by-product
of a generation that defied the System, the
Church, the State. A generation that went out
in the streets and called for human rights,
that wanted the end of a war, that helped bring
down the colonies in Africa, that fed the liberation
movements in Latin America, that fough against
the Viet Nam war. A generation that cultivated
good cinema, great music (in my view) and opened
the gates for creativity.
Camille came from true representatives of that
generation, the daugther of a French philosophy
proffesor and a Latin American activist, follower
of Trosky.
Camille was ahead of me, that was clear. I
had some long road in front of me before I could
be as free as she was and this work, her willingnes,
her openess to it, is what made walk faster
on that long road. I was setting myself free.
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