I like being afraid... with you - La Belle, La Belle et la Bête, Jean Cocteau, 1946

Running through Bartók’s disenchanted tale, whose haunting music was initially condemned as unplayable, and the expression of despair in Poulenc’s monologue, the director Krzysztof Warlikowski perceives a shared dramatic thread, a shared feminine consciousness and a shared sense of imprisonment and suffocation.

For the woman who penetrates the confines of Bluebeard’s castle and Elle, the woman who clings to a telephone conversation with a man as the only thing worth living for, are condemned to share the same fate.

And this man she speaks to, does he really exist? Unless the director has interpreted Cocteau’s words to the letter and the telephone has become a “terrifying weapon that leaves no trace, makes no noise”…

A coproduction Opéra national de Paris, Telmondis, Mezzo with the support of La Fondation Orange and the Centre national du cinéma et de l'image animée.

© Opéra national de Paris - Telmondis - Mezzo - France 2015