The DSPP Arts Committee Film Group "DAMAGE"  Directed by: Louis Malle

January 11, 2003
6:00 pm

DSPP ARTS COMMITTEE invites you to our next film group meeting on SATURDAY, JANUARY 11, at 6:00 p.m. We will screen and discuss Louis Malle’s 1993 film, DAMAGE, with academy award winners, Jeremy Irons and Juliette Binoche, as well as Rupert Graves and Amanda Richardson. The film will be shown in letterbox form DVD, in the unrated cut, followed by a fascinating interview with the director discussing the film and, particularly, how and why he choreographed and filmed the erotic scenes as he did.

Damage, one of the last of Malle’s career-long attempts to work through his own incestuous relationship with his mother through his films about forbidden sex, is a highly erotic film that is about obsession rather than romance. Dr. Stephen Fleming (Irons), a British government official, becomes heedlessly involved in an affair with his son’s fiancée, Anna (Binoche). Anna is as driven as Stephen to pursue and then continue the destructive affair without knowing why, although she explains that, younger, she suffered a traumatic loss, describing herself as “damaged”.  

Based on the novel by Josephine Hart, the film powerfully explores the obsessions and erotomanic compulsions of the well-chosen, beautifully played characters. Roger Ebert, who gives the film four stars, describes the film: “DAMAGE, like LAST TANGO IN PARIS and THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING is one of those rare movies that is about sexuality, not sex, about the tension between people, not “relationships”, about how physical love is meaningless without a psychic engine behind it. Stephen and Anna are wrong to do what they do in Damage, but they cannot help themselves. We know they are careening toward disaster. We cannot look away.”

RSVP: The film group meeting will be at the home of Judith Samson. Reservations are required because of space limitations. To reserve your place and for directions to Judith’s house, please contact Judith Samson at 214-750-7692 or at jgsamson@swbell.net.    

A pot-luck supper will precede the film at 6:00. Entrée and drinks will be provided. Please bring a side dish. Film will begin at 7:00, followed by group discussion.