The Marquise of O

One of Eric Rohmer's extremely rare departures from France and the present, this elegant version of Heinrich von Kleist's classic novella is set in 18th-century Italy during the Franco-Prussian War. It concerns a virtuous widow who is drugged, then raped by an officer in the invading Russian army. When she finds herself pregnant, she marries the man, not realising it was he who raped her. Shooting in Germany, in German with members of Peter Stein's Berlin theatre, Rohmer seems perfectly at ease with the ironic nuances of the delicate story. Without actual imitation, Rohmer and his cinematographer Nestor Almendros were inspired by German Romantic painters and bathe the neo-classical interiors in an unearthly light.