La villa Santo Sospir Reviews

"Soy un profesional que hace un film amateur", voilá, en esa confesión/declaración caben todas las imágenes.

A 16mm documentary of sorts made by Jean Cocteau at the titular villa, a vacation spot that would eventually feature prominently in his Testament of Orpheus, that surface textures is all about his “tattooing” of the walls but actually provides a glimpse into his artistry and process. Many of Cocteau’s works contained this aura of autobiography and self-reflection on art and how it is made, but La Villa Santo Sospir is nakedly about these subjects.

 

The blurred line between artifice and reality was a popular conceptual ideal for Cocteau, and that gets the full workout here. Most notably, there is an extended sequence where Cocteau restores several destroyed flowers to their original vibrancy and beauty by running the film of their destruction backwards. The artist is breathing life into dead things, creating an experience from a mere idea, and this section is possibly the best, simplest demonstration of the wondrous and dream-like beauty of Cocteau’s film work.

 

The best reason to watch this film is to see the variety of paintings and drawings that Cocteau produced at the villa. Not only did he “tattoo” the walls with a series of images that dip into the religious and mythological, and the space between them, but we also see various canvas paintings that he produced. The myth of Orpheus was a consistent obsession, and there’s no less than five or six paintings detailing the myth here. A personal favorite is Orpheus’ head resting upon his lyre.  

 

Thirty-seven minutes is a tad self-indulgent for this material, but Cocteau keeps it mostly light and ever moving. There’s a few detours into pretentious artistic musings, but it’s hard to be mad at them. They reveal many personal eccentricities and artistic themes from one of the great creative polymaths of the 20^th century. La Villa Santo Sospir is as essential a viewing experience as any of Cocteau’s other films, all the more so for how limited a number of films he directed between 1930 and 1959.