O’s HISTORY
Peter Asmussen after Pauline Réage/Anne Desclos
3 F / 1 M
Drama
Under the pseudonym Pauline Réage, Anne Desclos wrote “Histoire d’O ” (published in 1954) as a series of letters to her married lover, Jean Paulhan – a man of letters – during a period when she feared that he was about to leave her. It has become a pornographic classic in the spirit of de Sade, but also a female classic, which seductively gestalts the perverted in a relationship which exists exclusive on the terms of one party. In Asmussen’s dramatization the story is played in a photographic studio. In the game between actor and viewer, between exhibitionist and voyeur, neither man nor woman is what they pretend to be. O’s body is being stigmatized and is filled with strange marks, which reach far into the soul. The housekeeper uncovers the most terrible secrets, and the young model soon loses all her masks, when O together with her male lover embarks on the dreamy deep of their urges. What starts as an innocent game with eroticism and lust, soon becomes very serious indeed, imagination turns into cruel reality and leads the characters out still further.
