A Vingança de Uma Mulher (2012) - full transcript

A WOMAN'S REVENGE

A FILM BY

WITH

Extreme civilization takes
its frightening poetry from crime.

And so in this time of ineffable
and delicious progress,

crime has acquired
a strange physiognomy.

The story I have the pleasure
of presenting to you here

took place in the life of Roberto,

one of those men for whom
simulation became the greatest art.

"A dandy!" Some will say.

"A libertine!" Say others.



Be what it may, he is an impassive,
indecipherable man...

and thus enigmatic!

But the truth is that deep within,
Roberto feels a deep boredom.

The boredom of one who has
exhausted all the charms of this life.

The only thing that might amaze him

is the fact that nothing amazes him
anymore.

Yet...

Come on!

Yesterday, Sunday, an empty day,

I have written nothing for two days.

Today I woke up not so bad,

I slept rather well.

Without dreams,

at least nightmares.



I got up at eight,
I read, I took breakfast.

I answered an avalanche of letters.

Luísa made an appointment for me
for tomorrow at three o'clock.

"You will forget me", she wrote.

And it is so true,

I only remember her when I see her,

and each time I see her,
I forget her immediately afterwards.

I have to order some new shoes!

Spring is here!

I want to look like a Demigod

arriving on Earth
on the cloud that covered him.

Adorable! The Viscountess...

A sinner with no remorse.

She used to write to me many times,

today she is completely indifferent...

What should I think of this woman?

I do not know, nor do I want to know.

There goes Madame Veronique.

She was never pretty,
but that little nose of hers...

And those eyes that say everything!

The freshness of being 18 years old.

The beauty of the Devil
is often a Devil of a beauty.

What conversation was that yesterday...

Gentlemen's dinner.

And what gentlemen, good God!

Notaries, lawyers...

Not one single idea.

I decided not to drink
so as to speak as little as possible...

and in monosyllables.

Alice and her husband!

Steeped in the torpor of marriage.

She always looks at her husband
before she gives any opinion.

Not out of love, but fear!

How old the Count and Countess are.
They used to have excellent dinners.

The guests as carefully chosen
as the wines.

But yesterday's dinner...
I behaved, as the English say,

like someone born
with a silver spoon in their mouth.

They learned nothing about me.

Leonoreta...

She thinks I am in love...

poor Leonoreta...

the delight of her sighs!

Me? In love? What foolishness!

Caked in rouge...

Amazing bad taste!

Having arrived after a long journey,
Roberto returns to society once again.

One night he attends a musical soirée.

Where can Roberto have been
all this time?

When he left, he was going to Turkey...
Now I hear he has come from Boston!

Who knows what it was.

Is he coming here tonight?

Roberto? He's already inside.

– Are you alright, Henrique?
– Me? I think so.

Excuse me.

Come on! Music!

– You will have to excuse me...
– Always in a rush...

What are you hiding? Mon little boy?

"If one can give one's soul,
Just as one gives a portrait,

It is not my portrait, Madame,
That I am offering you today..."

Always mysteries ...,
Always mysteries with you.

Promise,

promise me you will come
to dine with me next week.

After all, Mon Cher Roberto,
I have to hear about your journey.

It was like all journeys:
with a certain return!

You are a palace in a labyrinth!

I will come to dine with the greatest
pleasure, my dear friend.

Roberto!

Are you going already?

Come on, Henrique!
It's a wonderful night!

And I'm starving.

Let Susana sing.

She is amazing.

But it's an inferno inside!
The heat is unbearable!

The only real hell I've ever known.

You mean the heat?

No. Not the heat! The social hell!

Come on! Let's go out for supper!
We can have a good conversation.

Conversation... A rare gift!
Roberto has that gift:

he joins a conversation as if the
conversation were the world itself.

His true "self"
is in an inspired conversation.

Ah, yes! What he himself
calls his "Fiery Angel" is released.

What fabulous women!

In all the varieties
of their species and races

were those I saw
in the markets of Andrinople....

Hotter than the red Andrinople itself!

That red made out of excrement,
urine, animal blood and snot,

that is what the silks are dyed with.

Yesterday was the premiere of "Cosí",
nothing special.

But an unbelievable thing happened.

There was a girl there

who, so it was said,
had stolen her mother's lover.

But her mother,
being considerably older,

knew much better
how to make herself loved...

When the girl realised that the lover
was going back to her mother,

she was furious!

She found a way to get hold

of her mother's passionate letters
to the so–desired man,

she had lithographs made of them,

and yesterday
at the end of the performance,

she threw them into the opera stalls.

It was a scandal!

From right up there
in the "Paradise" boxes!

Paradise! It is a good name
for that story! Paradise...

Who would take this story and write it...

I know, for example,
and I am not the only one who knows,

a woman, a great lady,
who happens even to be very devout.

Yet she carries a rosary
around her waist

with little death's heads
mounted in gold.

And she mixed the ecstasy
of her penances of self–flagellation

with that of other pleasures.

Well, who would write about that story?

About that woman?

Who, to make things worse,
is the author of pious books

and whom the Jesuits believe
to be a man, or even a saint?

What things a person
invents for amusement!

I am so glad you are back!

Why don't you publish what you write?

Now you are back
you can think about it seriously.

I'm not interested in that.

Doesn't that remind you of someone?

No...

You were right! A thousand times better
than Suzana's "Chévrier".

The world is so big and so rich.
Sometimes life is so good.

Memory always returns,
kneeling at our feet like a dog...

Always returns! Memory kneeling
at our feet like a dog...

Before, when alcohol
was the flame of the party...

on those nights,
which were almost always learned,

when death had not yet politely
and patiently drunk from this glass.

A reflection of nothing.

We knew that cheating ourselves,
repeating the farce,

was only the most dignified way
left of ourselves....

and what now?

Out of work actors, useless standards,

a defeated fiction in the war of time.

I could have sworn...

Oh, I'm not surprised at all.

Let us allow lost ideals be crossed
and unloved love

and the time that defeated it.

"Death laughing in our green years."

And because it is almost
the middle of the night,

let us allow them to finish their dinner

and let us move on
to that which is to come...

You're Spanish?

Si.

Are you coming?

I am with you.

A spiral staircase?

Come in!

Do you like me?

So much?

Wait for me!

Show me that portrait!

You're jealous?

Of a whore like me?

Do you want to see it?

Look!

The ribbon of the Golden Fleece!

It can only be a Spanish Grandee.

Where did you steal this?

Stole it? Por dios!

He gave it to me!

Who?

Your lover, of course!

No.

He isn't my lover!

Perhaps not any longer,
but you still love him.

Don't you understand a thing?
Nothing at all?

Neither of love nor of hate?

Love that man!

I detest him!

He is my husband!

Your husband?

Yes! My husband!

The greatest noble in all Spain.

Thrice a duke.

Four times a marquis.

Five time a count, Grandee of Spain
and among the highest!

I am the Duchess
D'Arcos de Sierra Leone.

Sierra Leone?

Saint–Jean...

That's right! Exactly!

One summer when I was there...

how long ago?

That year the highest society of Spain
came together in Saint-Jean–de–Luz.

All the talk was of the honeymoon
of the Duchess of Sierra Leone

with the greatest
and most opulent Lord of Spain.

A wedding with such pomp
had not been seen in that town

since the wedding of Louis XIV!

I made an effort to get close to them,

but the group of the Spanish society of
the Duke and Duchess of Sierra Leone

was strictly closed to foreigners like me.

But I managed to see you.

I sometimes glimpsed you
from a distance:

by the riverbank dunes,

praying in church...

Our dreams so close
to love in our souls...

She left without me getting to know her.

Yes. I saw you in Saint–Jean–de–Luz.

Yes.

It was I.

In all my glory,
in the full splendour of life.

Sanzia Florinda
de Concepcíon de Turre Cremata,

Duchess of Sierra Leone.

And now...

And now?

Now...

Now I find myself
in the intoxication of vengeance...

A vengeance I will make so deep
that I will die of it.

Like the mosquitoes in my country,

who die bursting with blood,
in the wound they have made.

Don't you understand?

But I will make you understand.

You now know who I am,

but you don't know what I am.

Do you want to know?

Do you want to know my story?

Really?

I want to tell it
to everyone who comes here.

I want to tell it to the whole world!

– Tell me! – Yes!

I have so often wished to tell it
to the men I brought here;

but they don't come here, they say,
to listen to stories!

As soon as I started
they would interrupt me,

making fun and insulting me.

Liar! Mad woman!

I heard it many times.

They don't believe me.

But you,

you...

saw me...

in Saint–Jean–de–Luz...

I bore this name,

like someone wearing a diadem.

This name that I now drag,

like the skirt of my dress,

through the filthiest mud

like they used to drag the shield
of a dishonored knight out

tied to a horse's tail.

This name...

Sierra Leone...

still borne today by the greatest
Grandee of Spain,

the proudest,

who has the rare privilege
to remain uncovered

before His Majesty the King.

Ten times nobler than the King!

For the Duke of d'Arcos
de Sierra Leone

what are all the houses
that reigned over Spain?

Castile, Aragon, Transtamare,
Austria and Bourbon?

He descends from the Gothic kings,
and, on Brunehild's side,

descends from the Merovingians
of France.

But Don Christoval, Duke of Sierra
Leone and of other duchies,

did not marry his lineage
when he married me.

I am a Turre Cremata,

of Italy.

Sanzia Florinda
Conception de Turre Cremata.

My marriage was a treaty...
one race to another.

As suited the terrible etiquette
of Spanish nobility.

Etiquette, made to prevent
hearts from beating...

Unless they beat stronger
than those iron corsets.

And I was one of those hearts.

I loved...

Dom Estêvão!

Before I met him,

my marriage
brought my heart no happiness.

It was a grave affair,

as grave as was old Catholic Spain.

A marriage that was proud,

silent,

sombre.

I was brought up to be what I was:

the wife of a noble of Spain.

My role was to add another generation

to the many generations
of irreprehensible, majestic women...

Those seen in the heavy portraits

covering the walls
of the castle Sierra Leone...

Those whose virtue
was guarded by their pride

as a fountain is guarded by a lion.

The solitude in which I lived
did not weigh upon my soul,

which was as peaceful

as the mountains of red marble

that surround Sierra Leone.

I did not suspect

that, under that marble, slept a volcano.

Dom Estêvão, Marquis of Albuquerque,
my cousin from Portugal,

who has just arrived in Sierra Leone.

Dom Estêvão is going
to Bologna to study.

On the way he is giving us
the pleasure of his visit

and has accepted
to stay a few weeks with us.

Love, that love of which I had only
heard in some books,

swooped down upon my heart,

like the eagle swoops down
and carries off the child who cries...

I also cried.

But a Spanish woman of the old style
was not made for crying.

The days followed one another

and my pride rose up against what I felt
in the presence of this danger,

Estêvão,

who took unworthy power over me

with revolting strength.

I wished to do my duty as a Spanish
woman by warning Don Christoval.

You called, Madam?

I request you to send Dom Estêvão
away from this castle

as soon as possible!

I have realised that your cousin

feels for me a love
that offends me as insolence.

Have him leave, I ask you!

He would not dare!

"He would not dare!"

"He..."

"He would not dare!"

threw me into Estêvão's arms. –

I do not know
whether other women are like me,

but that incredulous pride
of Don Christoval's,

referring to the man I loved,

and his disdainful and calm
"He would not dare",

insulted me,
as if I were Estêvão himself,

who now possessed me like a God,
in the depths of my being.

"Prove to him that you would dare!"

I said to Estêvão that very night.

It is true that we were hardly
twenty years old.

Ignatius Loyola, Knight of the Virgin,

did not love the Queen of Heaven
more purely than Estêvão loved me.

Adultery?

Which of us thought
of ourselves as adulterers?

Neither of us felt anything
like the desire of vulgar loves.

Estêvão was as pious as a Portuguese
knight of the time of Albuquerque.

From him
and from the purity of his love,

I took the faith
which kindled the purity of mine.

Estêvão had me in his heart,

like someone having Our Lady
in a golden niche

with a lamp at her feet.

He loved my soul.

Soul to soul.

If the angels love each other
before the Throne of God,

they must love as we loved...

He would rather have seen me
do a good deed

than waltz with me mouth to mouth.

We stayed together hours and hours,

able to do anything...

and wanting nothing.

Believe me that at that time
Estêvão's lips had never touched mine

and that a kiss of his nestled on a rose

that was then held by me,

would be enough to make me swoon.

Could a state of souls like this
have lasted?

Was it possible for this to last?

Were we not, without knowing it,
without even suspecting it,

at the most dangerous game
for the weak creatures we are?

We lived in plenitude,

we lived in the blue of the skies.

But the sky was African

and the blue was fire.

I think I understand you.

What does it matter what you think?

As for me! Rogues!

I wish to die the same death!

Touch not the queen!

Get the traitor!

Give the heart of this traitor
to the dogs to eat.

Go further, avenge yourself more.
It is I you should make eat it!

Let my breast be the living tomb
for the man I loved.

I felt that it was my breast
that was being cut open.

But, alas!
It was not my heart they tore out.

They tore out Estêvão's heart, from
inside his body, that lay at my feet,

his breast cut open, quartered like a
sack by the hands of those monsters.

I felt the pain
that his corpse no longer felt.

They bit me fearfully,

they tore my dress
and wiped their bloody jaws on it...

Here it is!

Look!

And remember what you see!

This is the blood of the man I loved

and I could not save from the dogs!

When I find myself again alone
in the accursed life I lead,

when vomit comes to my throat
and chokes me,

when the strength of vengeance
weakens in me,

when the duchess returns
and the harlot shocks me,

I wrap myself in this robe,

I rub my soiled body
in its bloody folds, that still burn me.

These bloody rags
are the talisman that revives me.

When I place them on my body,

they move my entrails

and the desire for revenge without end
rages in me again!

What can I do for you?

Look!

Remember what you see!

Do you understand now?

Do you understand
what my revenge is?

I chose it among many,

I chose it among all of them,

as one chooses, between daggers,
the one that will cause most suffering.

I am a Turre–Cremata!

Don Christoval would never suspect

what was fermenting
beneath my face of bronze.

There was not the slightest allusion.

Not a single word.

The silence.

The silence.

The silence of the hate
that feeds off itself.

Caesar's wife must be
above all suspicion

and I had to remain, in others' eyes,
the Duchess d'Arcos de Sierra Leone.

I prepared my flight
from that suffocating castle.

How?

It was from the chapel,

on an autumn night,

when the air hung still in the sky,

that I fled
and reached the gorges of the Sierras.

And you came here.

I thought of going to Madrid.

But in Madrid the Duke is all powerful

and I would have been arrested
at once.

And once I was caught

I would have been thrown
into the in–pace of some convent,

to die there between two doors,
withdrawn from the world.

This same world which I need so much
for my vengeance.

I decided to come here.

Here is the best stage for my infamy.

That man deserved death!

Kill him? Me?

To kill that man only once?

Too light a death.

Did he kill Estêvão de Albuquerque?

Did he run him through with a sword,
like one noble to another?

No!

He had him killed by his varlets.

He had his heart thrown to the dogs
and his body on the dunghill,

or somewhere worse,
that I do not know,

nor have ever known.

The Duke is brave.

He does not fear death.

Only his pride, his immense pride,

would be cowardly,
when it concerned dishonour.

It is necessary to wound that honour
to crucify him in his pride.

And for that reason
I have become what I am,

the whore Sierra Leone
who receives you tonight...

But he...

the Duke...

Does the Duke know
what you have become?

Sooner or later, the mud
of my shame will fall upon him.

Look, I have brought with me
all the jewels and money I had.

I have sometimes thought of fascinating
some young man or other,

and sending him to the Duke
to tell him of my ignominy.

I ended up dismissing that idea.

It is not just on a little heap of dung

that I want his name
and my memory raised up...

I want a whole pyramid!

Any of the men
who have climbed these stairs

can spit his wife's dishonour in his face,

that spittle that can never be wiped off.

But I do not wish to leave
my vengeance to chance!

Vengeance on your own body,

on your own soul.

Vengeance on yourself.

One day the putrefaction of debauchery

will end up gnawing at
and devouring the prostitute.

On that day, on that day
my life will be paid.

Do you understand now?

The Duke may never find out.

I will know!

Night after night I will know!

Feelings like mine
may seem insane to you.

But I only find reason in madness.

I drink this filth and find it nectar,

because it is the nectar of revenge.

Pleasure...

The pleasure of dishonoring him.

As if these painted eyes saw us.

For me this image is like the sword

that the Arab horseman drives
into his horse's flank

to make it cross the desert.

And when I feel the horror

of being in your arms,

or in the arms of all you men,

you so stupid and so fatuous men,

because I do always feel it

and I cannot get used
to the taste of this filth,

I have this ring of fire
which burns me to the marrow.

But I have no portrait of Estêvão.

I only see him in my mind's eye...

All the better, thus.

If I saw him, I would repent,

I would blush

at the indignity and the humiliation
of the life that is mine.

It is hard to get used...

to this.

The shame.

But I must do so.

Warm life...

remained...

behind,

I turn to you...

who freeze...

in my light tunic of fire.

What's this?

Take back your money.

No gold enters here.

I accept it from no one.

I am a penny–ha'penny girl.

Thus.

Duchess D'arcos de Sierra Leone
Cunt, Ass, Cocksucker, Twat

Mouth–farter
And other pleasures of sex

We stayed together hours and hours,

able to do anything...

and wanting nothing.

We lived in plenitude,

we lived in the blue of the skies.

Travel notes...

I saw the sea in the morning
twisting and leaping

– dark green and spume on the wind –

with the first rains of November.

In the silence of my house

I listen to the crackling of the fire,

I see ashes and coals,
a dance of flames.

Over the fireplace, some books
recall other times,

ornaments that dissimulate
a lost passion.

Neither greatness nor wretchedness
nor hidden words,

alone among white walls,

a ghost alone in this village of ghosts.

Of his meeting with the duchess,
Roberto said not one word:

he kept it and locked it in the most
mysterious corner of his heart,

as if it were a rare bottle of perfume

from which something would be lost
if it were allowed to breathe.

A cloak of silence that falls on souls
that are closed for ever,

without doubt witnesses that what
can be said here, cannot be said here.

Unless it is precisely, beneath a mask,
and through diversions.

To occupy his empty time,

Roberto turned to the last, derisory,
traces of a great past:

gambling, fencing, reading...

Woe for those who do not know

how to wear the mask
they have chosen.

Tired of everything and everyone,
Roberto goes off on a journey again.

Past the summer and its ardent glow;

some things for other things
are all gone.

When Roberto returns,

he is invited to a dinner
at the Spanish Embassy.

Your Excellency will forgive me,

but do you know whether there are

any of the Sierra Leone family
still in Madrid?

Certainly there are! The Duke himself.

So then who is the Duchess de Sierra
Leone who died this morning?

Is she some relation to the Duke?

It can only be his wife.

But some years ago
I was told she had died.

She disappeared
and no one knew why nor how.

The truth is a great mystery.

She was haughtier
than her husband himself,

the proudest
of the 'ricos hombres' of all Spain.

They lived in isolation in Sierra Leone,
that desert of red marble,

where eagles, if they exist,

must die stifled of boredom
amongst there peaks.

But was it known that she in fact died?

I had that idea.

One day the duchess disappeared

and no one has ever found
a trace of her.

Since that time nothing more
has been said of the issue.

No one has dared ask questions
of the Duke

who is a man of the time of Charles V.

And the Duke has never said a word
about his wife.

The Duchess d'Arcos de Sierra Leone
was not like one of those silly girls

who might do something foolish
or be carried off by a lover.

As a single woman
she was a Turre–Cremata,

the last of the Turre–Cremata.

I have no doubt of this!

Lord Ambassador of Spain, I have the
honour to announce, your Excellency,

that the duchess died this morning.

And, what you would assuredly
never suspect,

her body is in the chapel of St Lazarus,
which, as you know,

usually receives the bodies of women
who are... unworthy.

And have you no further information?

None, Excellency.

Besides, as I knew I would have the
honour of meeting you this evening

I thought you might inform me.

I shall have this information tomorrow.

Very well.

Did you know the duchess?

I will be back.

Here lies Sanzia Florinda Conception
de Turre Cremata

Duquesa D' Arcos de Sierra Leone
A Repentant Harlot

Who died at St Lazarus on the
21st April 18 REQUIESCAT IN PACE

Father, did you know the lady
who is in the chapel?

I did. The wretched woman.
She was No. 119.

She caught the most frightful
of diseases.

In a few months
she was rotten to the bones.

One day, one of her eyes popped out
of its orbit and dropped to her feet,

like a large coin.

The other one turned into liquid.

She died, but she died without
a whimper through incredible tortures.

It was only at the end
I was told she was a duchess.

Very wealthy, she left everything
to other patients like her,

and ordered a grand funeral.

She only wished to take with her,
on her arm, a medallion on a bracelet

from which she had never separated.

But what is most strange,
at least for me,

is that she demanded,
no doubt as penance,

that beneath her titles,
on the coffin and in the grave,

it should be written
that she was a harlot...

And she did not even wish, no doubt,
due to her humility,

that the word "repentant" be written.

But what is your interest in her?

"Time hath its order regularly known;

Not so the world,
which so confused doth roll,

That God thereof
would all forgetful seem:

Nature, opinions,
use, events, the whole

Combine to make us feel the life we
own is really nothing but a dream".