A classic

Since this movie has a really strong reputation (it is included in the ‘1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die’ list among other things), I was quite eager to check it out. By now, it was the 3rd movie I saw directed by Jean Cocteau and I guess I’m starting to get more familiar with his surrealist vibe. Recently, I also watched ‘La belle et la bête’ by Cocteau but, even if it did like it, to be honest, it didn’t really blow me away though. In fact, I thought this other directing effort by Cocteau was actually much more intriguing. Sure, visually speaking, it was less fancy than ‘La belle et la bête’ but Cocteau still had some neat tricks in this area but, as far as I was concerned, it wasn’t the most interesting thing about this movie. Basically, he took an ancient Greek myth and set it in a contemporary setting, which is basically what we often do with many classic Shakespeare plays. Anyway, it was above all quite fun to see that he really took some liberties with the classic mythological tale. Indeed, even though Orphée still did go to Hell to save his wife Eurydice, he seemed to be actually most of the time rather annoyed by her and, in fact, he seemed to be actually more interested by Death who herself was also in love with Orphée. It probably sounds pretty weird if you haven’t seen this movie and it was indeed weird but these unexpected turns were super interesting. Still, I have to admit I still struggled to get a good grip on this challenging material (the fact that I was really tired when I watched it probably didn’t help) and I should probably re-watch it at some point. Anyway, to conclude, even if the damned thing was not an easy watch, there was something quite mesmerizing about it and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you like the genre.