Members Bonuses- Total Eclipse

Romane Bohringer is not the greatest looking woman in the world, and she is not likely to win many Oscars based on what I've seen of her, but her boobs have to be the equal or superior to Jennifer Connolly's. Connolly is prettier and more famous, but Bohringer's are every bit as impressive. Take a look at the fourth collage for an illustration of the size and fullness. Note: the one really cruddy picture of her almost off the page (bottom right of the first collage) is only there because it was the only good look at her pubes, and that crop to the right is not my cropping, but the right hand side of the frame in the widescreen version. (Which is no tribute to the cinematographer.)

Total Eclipse portrays the relationship of Arthur Rimbaud to his mentor and homosexual lover, Paul Verlaine. The title refers to the fact that the modernist Rimbaud, while still only in his mid-teens, completely eclipsed his more traditional mentor as a poet. But more important than just talent was the fact that Rimbaud's revolutionary style was the one that shaped the future, and eventually rendered Verlaine's old-fashioned romantic poetry archaic and irrelevant.

Rimbaud was a child prodigy, and from an unexpected setting. Unlike Mozart, who was educated to be what he became, Rimbaud grew up in a farming family, and taught himself pretty much everything, with the guidance of some sympathetic local teachers who recognized his brilliance and gave him access to their books. He is considered the first modernist, as important to poetry as the impressionists were to art, but it is based entirely on his work as a teenager. He quit writing at 19, and it wasn't just posturing bullshit. He said:

"I tried to invent new flowers, new planets, new flesh, new languages. 
I thought I had acquired supernatural powers. 
I called myself a magician, an angel, free from all moral constraint.
Well, I shall ask forgiveness for having lived on lies, and that's that."

And then he walked away from Paris, became a trader in Africa and ran a successful business pretty much until his death. He successfully avoided European society, civilized talk, culture, the arts, and writing. And if memory serves, I think he lived those post-artistic years completely as a heterosexual.

I think I have pointed out several times that I got interested in Rimbaud after I first saw this movie, read everything I could find on him or by him, and I realized that the casting of Leo D was a masterstroke. I don't really like DiCaprio any more than you guys do, but he IS Rimbaud. If you read the physical description of Rimbaud, or what he was like, you realize that it required no acting at all from Leo.

Is the movie worth watching if one is not especially interested in 19th century French poetry? Good question. The answer is that it's a pretty good movie but it didn't know where to end. It must have about a half-hour of anticlimax at the end (after Verlaine shot Rimbaud), and the director didn't know how to present that within the narrative structure so she really resorted to a trite technique. Many years after the main story, old man Verlaine met Rimbaud's sister in a cafe, and the sister narrated the remainder in overvoice.

I'd say the other main weakness of the movie's internal structure is that it portrays Verlaine as a totally repulsive person, and gives the viewer no understanding of why such a man was loved by the beautiful teenage genius poet, and a sexy and much younger rich woman whom he kept abusing.

The Gold is Carole Ann from 6th Feb 1984

"Page Three Girl and sometime Playboy Model Samantha Jessop demonstrates an interesting way to cool off."

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