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57% Critic Match
Hecate
“Words usually come too late”
5.7 / 10• 1982• 1h 45m•NR• French
DramaRomance
Storyline
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.
Cast & Crew
Bernard Giraudeau
Julien Rochelle
Lead
Lauren Hutton
Clotilde
Jean Bouise
le consul de France
Jean-Pierre Kalfon
Massard
Gérard Desarthe
Le colonel de Watteville
JB
Juliette Brac
Miss Henry
PT
Patrick Thursfield
L'Anglais
ST
Suzanne Thau
La tenancière du bordel
What People Are Saying
3.0
“A staggering achievement of craft and ambition. Daniel Schmid's vision lands with breathtaking precision.”
3.0
“Every frame feels alive. Hecate is the rare release that takes its audience seriously.”
