This Andre Delvaux film concerns an apparently happily married archivist who finds a mysterious woman in an abandoned farmhouse one day and enters into a passionate affair with her. Set in and near the Walloon "Fagnes," an ancient forest in Eastern Belgium, Delvaux successfully taps into an almost myth-like atmosphere as Mathieu, the meek archivist, is suddenly awakened by passion into an increasingly sinister double-life. It's a story Maeterlinck (author of Pelleas and Melisande, which became the libretto for Debussy's glorious opera) would have loved. The music, by Devreese, is appropriately haunting. The ending will leave you hanging, but in a splendid state of "aporia."
Review of Belle
