Hecate
Words usually come too late
Set amid the European community in an unspecified North African country, a colony on the verge of nationalism just before the war. And colonized is what happens to a French diplomat, Julien Rochelle, when he meets the mysterious beauty Clothilde de Watteville. Schmid 's favorite axiom, that love is projection, never had such a thorough airing. Is Clothilde really the wife of a French official now holed up in Siberia? Or is she Hecate, goddess of black magic and devourer of the Arab boys she meets far from the European quarter? Only our projections know for sure; for the rest, she is a "woman looking out into the night." Drawn from a novel by Paul Morand, who based the main character on his wife Helene, Schmid's film achieves an atmosphere of magic in which psychological credibility is not so much absent as irrelevant-a film that distances itself from the drama it invokes, perhaps as the elusive Clothilde turns her back on the madness she provokes.
Top Cast
Bernard Giraudeau
Julien Rochelle
Lauren Hutton
Clotilde
Jean Bouise
le consul de France
Jean-Pierre Kalfon
Massard
Gérard Desarthe
Le colonel de Watteville
Juliette Brac
Miss Henry
Patrick Thursfield
L'Anglais
Suzanne Thau
La tenancière du bordel
Raja Reinking
La fille du bar
Mustapha Tsouli
Ibrahim
Teco Celio
Le capitaine Berta
Rose-Marie Schneider
Irene Staub
Karen Schenker-Donovan
Liz Panama
Michel Journot
