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Bookmark this pageTotal Eclipse (1995)
Director: Agnieszka Holland
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
September, 1871: Arthur Rimbaud arrives in post-revolutionary Paris from Charleville at the invitation of Paul Verlaine. Verlaine, an accomplished poet with a growing reputation and a pregnant young trophy wife to match, is as instantly entranced by the precocious, anarchic, contemptuous 16-year-old as by the unprecedented talent evinced in the boy's poetry. Drinking their way through the city's literary salons, the pair strike out on a passionate, illicit affair. But it's a woefully imbalanced relationship, with Rimbaud compulsively abusing his elder, and the weak-willed Verlaine resorting ever more to the bottle. Christopher Hampton's screenplay presents a thoroughly researched reading whose historical authenticity only skims the surface of any emotional truths. Whether you take to this at all probably depends on your reaction to the affair on show. It's abusive, sordid, violent - but then this was hardly a coupling made in heaven. DiCaprio (Rimbaud) and Thewlis (Verlaine) provide dynamic if mismatched performances, though there's no excusing Hampton's own laughable cameo, nor the protracted coda with DiCaprio doing a Peter O'Toole in the desert.Author: NB
Cast & crew
Director: Agnieszka Holland
Producer: Jean-Pierre Ramsay Levi
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, David Thewlis, Romane Bohringer, Dominique Blanc, Felicie Pasotti Carbarbaye, Nita Klein, Christopher Hampton full cast
Genre(s): Period/Swashbucklers
Duration: 111 mins
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