Chris
Tysh
Working Note
The sentences are stretched out on the white page with their terrible story of evicting the father, the hideous truth of the paternal trampled until its name hangs naked, mere shreds.The child and the mother arrange themselves in the vacant space, suddenly dizzy under their common aversion for bourgeois bienséance, i.e. what sits well with the good people. Pierre and Hélène practice a new conjugation: irregular, indecent and deeply corruptive. In truth, these impossible words have already effected one transport, from French to English, none too worse for wear. I hail them now, their divine laughter, the stupendous hell of their flesh, their abject logic. Like a seamstress puckering her lips I outfit them with images, I pinch and tuck; I undress and invent. Docile bodies, they go on, all the same, never forgetting the irrespirable air that is their due. In the cinematic light of my recutting, I dispatch the brides to be. From behind I look at them fading into black.
Mother, I : a film script based on Batailles Ma Mère
A fairly long preamble constituted by a series of flashbacks pertaining to the primary family structure: i.e. number 3; the triangle. All these quick shots to be filmed before the credits appear.
The film would open with a brutishly obvious shot (or shots, to be more specific).
1) A young man in a darkened room startled by shouts. Opens door and posts himself in the corridor. Noise, indistinct shouts, scraping sounds, heavy breathing, silence.
2) A door opens: the father, red in the face, disheveled and swaying.
3) The father speaks to the son; an incomprehensible tenderness in the voice, a solicitude, absurdly boyish. We cant hear the words; a lingering close-up of the young mans incomprehension, bordering on terror.
4) The son walks in on father in nightshirt rushing after fully clothed mother. They fall to the floor; shouts. Camera follows young man to his room.
5) Father opens sons door by mistake; swaying, bottle in hand. When he takes notice of son, he drops the bottle. The liquor flows while young mans gaze is fixed upon his father whos clutching his head. The young man trembles with rage.
6) A view of a village church. Mother and son walk toward church in the early morning. A silent communion holds them. Their dark beauty is almost painful. The word adoration should make itself visible as an insistence on meshing these two against the intruder. It could be the name of the church (one of the words, that is), possibly followed by a didactic shot of a Madonna w/child painting (a close-up of mothers gaze, e.g. Bellinis series) which could in a proleptic fashion, indicate the measure of mothers pleasure.
Credits & all that jazz
(The designing principle of the credits ought to rest on the notion of letters, correspondence, etc. since the movie is about positionality, relay, about the one who stands in the place of desire)
Scene 1 Night. Interior.
Music begins, something religious, Gregorian chant The camera reveals a large, beautifully appointed room which is both bedroom and study. Its opulence is undercut by an invisible, intangible sobriety; everything is perfectly in placethe ambient order is to counterpoint the emotional disarray of Pierre, the young man kneeling by his bed dressed only in his pajama bottoms. Perhaps a series of photographs adorning the wall will inject into the viewer the undeniable presence of terror that Pierre lives in and thrives by. (cf. iconography of sacrifice, mutilation, "natural" eruptions dear to Bataille) He recites his prayer, eyes lowered, his speech stressing certain words which will function like a nursery rhyme (i.e. mère/terre/terreur or pig/kill/will/age/edge/etc.)
Terror unendingly renews with advancing age
Without end, it returns us to the beginning.
The beginning that I glimpse on the edge of the grave
Is the pig in me which neither death nor insult can kill.
Terror on the edge of the grave is divine and I sink
Into the terror whose child I am
Scene 2 Int. Night. Pierres bedroom
A tracking shot of a phantom bed, obfuscating disarray of white in the darkened room.
"Pierre!" spoken by a soft, feminine and imperious voice.
Framing the bed, the camera reveals movement in response to the insistence of the voice. There will be no repetition of the name. The young man sits up and reaches for a cigarette as if to watch a movie. Three different takes will mime the scene of the call:
a) Flashback: a sick child looks at his mother who calls his name as if it were a question.
b) Between sleep and wakefulness, Pierre acknowledges his name. The camera pans across the room, the next one, looking for the source of the voice.
c) Pierre is dreaming and hears his name spoken by a womans voice. The feeling it evokes resembles something unspeakable, beyond representation (the Real).
The next shot will make it clear that the "movie" is over and yet a bridge will have been established. A close-up of Pierre extinguishing his Craven. When he looks up, someone bursts out laughing. The camera will start with the high heels and slowly go up the back of Pierres mother. The shot should be equal in length to the obscene laughter of the mother. It is imperative to have the mother fill the screen. The son and his wounded gaze have been deleted by her presence, self-sufficient, smutty and gorgeous. We do not see her face. This fetishistic avoidance inscribes the sons position (in back of her). (A bas-relief of Eurydice and Orpheus will highlight the tenuousness of this relationship and perhaps announce the impossibility of a face- à- face)
Scene 3 Int. Evening. Dining Room.
Mother and son dine alone. Mother talks in an excited, light-hearted way. She is dressed in black.
Your fathers gone to Brittany, to aunt Colette. No doubt, he will gamble and
Drink himself silly. Ive had enough of his enfantillages. Im staying home.
You will keep me company, wont you? Well go out on the town and now that
Youre such a handsome creature, theyll take you for my beau.
A laughter that follows these words echoes and again acts as a rhyme. A close-up of the deep red in the wine glass as if the Bordeaux were an explanation for these sudden revealings. Indexically, the camera will line up the wine, lips and nails in a vertical plane while Pierre recedes into the background.
Scene 4 Int. Day. Pierres room.
A medium shot of Pierre standing in front of a full mirror. He is talking directly at it as if speaking (rehearsing) for a part.
Up till then I had never realized
That she drank. I was soon to realize
That she drank every day, in the same way.
But that rippling laughter, that indecent
Exuberance
Scene 5 Int. Day. In the foyer of the house.
Mother, putting on her gloves, speaking to Pierre, over her shoulder
Im taking you to town tomorrow
Until tomorrow night, my gallant lover
She kisses him lightly.
This scene will be shot several times in a mise-en-abyme structure so that the viewer gets a dizzying sensation yet is conscious enough to notice that during each take the kiss becomes more and more non-existent.
The last shot (taken from the hall, from above) shows Pierre as if trying to hold onto a spit of life which will forever elude him. The mothers obscene laugh will punctuate (bracket) this corridor scene.
Scene 6 Ext. Day.
This scene will establish not so much a reality effect as the sense that Pierre has a normal life apart from his mothers (torment).
A long shot of a college building. Young men smoking cigarettes stand in the street in small groups discussing the exam. The camera will meet their faces with gentleness and a need to display their boyish infectious charm. Pierre comes out of the building and begins to speak with animation.
Lacte gratuit, hmph, Ive been ready for that one since my first
Ejaculation. What did you get?
The camera follows Pierres gaze and frames his companion.
The state. Marx. Weimar. Stalin, hegemony. I gave him an earful.
They enter a café named Everyday Life. The group conversation resumes around the examination topics (to be described in fuller details). Pierre lights a cigarette and looks at the waitress waiting for his order. She speaks with a very pronounced Parisian prole accent.
What will it be, mon ptit chou?
Overcome with a sudden inexplicable embarrassment, Pierre is unable to speak. He simply points to the next tables empty coffee cups. Medium shot of the back of the waitress walking away, swinging her hips toward the bar. The irruption of laughter returns Pierre to thoughts of his mother.
Scene 7 Ext. Evening.
Pierre returns home. Rings. Door. Maid. Hallway, etc. The suddenness of the dialogue takes center stage
Mother: It was sudden.
Pierre: Hes dead?
Mother: Yes.
During the short pause, the camera descends her figure the way one would a steep incline. Close-up of hair, shoulder, arm, downward to the dark hem of her long skirts.
Church bells in the distance.
Mother: Well take the train to Vannes and then onto Segrais.
Well have to rent a car. Dont forget, youre supposed to be
Overcome with grief. The servants expect this. Theres no need to weep but lower your eyes.
Pierre leaves the drawing room. On the way to the bathroom, he once again recites, as from a script learned by heart.
Could I conceal the jubilation
Which was mounting inside me
Against the conventional sorrow
That is bound up with the sly advent
Of death?
I did not want my mother to age
I wanted to see her set free
Freed from her oppressor
And also from the mad gaiety she took
Refuge in and which made her
Face lie. I wanted to be happy
I even wanted this bereavement
In which fate was enfolding us
To flavor our happiness with the spell-
Binding sadness that makes up
The sweetness of death
The last words should coincide with Pierres buttoning himself up. Water flush sounds. Fade. Windows streaming with rain. Inside the house, a maid wipes her face.
Scene 8 Ext. Night.
Filmed at great distance, through a filter, the car (carriage, hearse-like, limo, something huge and black) recedes from the viewer, shining with rain. This is the quintessential drive scene of the 19th century French novel. It remains less important to communicate the intertext than convey the obscure threat of what is not shown.
The camera will tease the spectator with fetishistic morsels (voilette, glove, branch, cutting in) in order to highlight the inescapably voyeuristic nature of any film enterprise. The to and fro of the receding car should connote the intermittency of desire by ushering in the famous fort/da reel.
Scene 9 Int. Night train.
In the drowning clutter of wheels, the softly breathing chest of the mother, sleeping as if all alone of her sex. A splendid match girl. Pierre standing in the corridor, cigarette in his right hand, gazes at his mother in the manner of a voyager looking at the darkened landscape. Softly he calls, maman. The night is stained with longing. Pierre turns to the window in the corridor and closes his eyes. The name of the dead father no longer a mutter between them.
Scene 10. Int. Day.
In a hotel restaurant, Pierre approaches his mother ensconced in a red banquette. A Bordeaux bottle already half-empty distracts him from looking up at her: tense with fatigue and a silent rage. This scene is charged with the exaggerated hardness of glass and sterling, reflecting the sudden hatred. The shots will crisscross between them, cutting and stabbing the trembling Pierre, flushed by now like the one who says yes after the fact. She fills her glass, all noise and hostile gaze.
Pierre: Isnt it better for him? For you, too?
Mother: Shut up! What do you know about it?
Pierre begins to stutter an answer, failing to notice the queer smile which has come upon her face. Imperceptibly, the grand, cold opulence of the dining room has been spotted, degraded. The air is stale and their voices break the silence like cheap china.
Mother: I made his life, hell. Didnt I? Go ahead, say it!
Pierre (in protest): He is dead and we shouldnt say anything against him. But your life was difficult.
Mother: You know nothing about my life.
Shes drinking fast now, dead to the world, yet adamant not to drown the obscure matter closing up her throat. A tired, untidy waiter brings a new bottle.
Waiter: Feels like a storm coming up, he says looking up at the chandelier. Nobody answers him.
It will be the directors task (and the lead actress) to displace the invisible, changing weather upon Mothers face: after the hardness vanishes from her features, an indescribable softness takes over.
Mother: Pierre, please, look at me!
Instantly, her countenance grows overcast and a look of horror possesses her while she struggles against a dizzy spell which lends her the frozen air of insanity.
The camera will attend to Pierre as an unbiased witness, simply recording his intense bewilderment, adjusting the rack of his torture by a close-up here and there. Spectator of his mothers hideous truth, he watches helplessly, prostrate by a governing panic.
Mother: You are too young and I shouldnt talk to you at all, but sooner or later, you will be wondering whether your mother deserves your respect.
Well, your father is dead now and I am sick and tired of falsehoods. I am worse than he. Much worse!
The camera pulls back in a reverse track as if to insist on the finality of the last words uttered by Mother. Perhaps a few notes of music will accompany this false ending. The same scene but bathed in a much harsher, unflattering light. Forward track toward Mother, very close shot as she smiles a bitter, enigmatic, practically inexistent smile. Suddenly she grabs the neck of her dress with both hands and pulls it open.
Mother: Pierre, only you have any respect for your mother who deserves none. Those men you saw in the salon, those pretty fops, who do you think they were?
Pierre is once again in this scene, caught in the snarls of his ignorance. Faint music covers his inability to answer.
Mother: As for your father, he knew. He just went along with it.. The minute you were out of the house, those acting fools would stop behaving respectfully toward you mother.
Look at her!
Between indecency and agony, her distraught smile transfixes Pierre. The camera, perfectly still, should "hold" the pair prisoner in its tight gaze for what will seem to the viewer like an uncomfortable amount of time. In a way, the weight of meaning elicited by this scene, will have appeared through the meshes of Mothers double, yet not identical, command. From me to her, what an abyss!
Scene 11. Ext. Late afternoon.
Camera sweeps the hotel grounds which darken suggestively under a sudden downpour, then frames dining-room bay windows as they explode with lightning to disappear behind a mean curtain of rain. Thunder sounds rattle the veracity of this disingenuous tableau. What is to follow will be hailed with a certain suspicion as if the relation between cinematic language and the materiality of desire could only be secured in fantasy. To purchase this disavowal, the film maker may resort to any number of conventions at his disposal. The scene will have the whispered somnolence of an anonymous call in the night.
Scene 12. Int. Evening. Pierres room.
Darkened bedroom has the unnerving semblance of a sick room. Lying in bed, Pierre, pale and disheveled, feebly raises himself as if to take his medicine. Pierres mother, totally obscured yet more present than ever, wills him to suffer these words before he (and the audience) can divine her face
What I want is that you love me unto death.
But I dont want your love unless you know I am
Repulsive, and love me even as you know it.
Fade to black. Music.
Scene 13. Int. Evening. Pierres room.
Open window, stormy sky. Once again, a chiasmus will have operated. The hissing, whistling, panting and thunder boom one hears belong to the expressive weather, while Pierres anguish remains silent. Without much thought, Pierre positions himself on the rug, arms outstretched like a supplicant. Did he dream it? Had she truly been in his room? Uttered those words?
Pierre: For my part, it is in death I love you at this very instant.
A close-up of Pierres mouth will turn him over like a lovers request as he quotes her words from memory:
Pierre: But I dont want your love unless you know I am
Repulsive, and love me even as you know it.
Because it asks nothing of us save repeating a sentence in the proper order, citation, this conjure trick of identity, functions along hallucinatory lines. The slow pan of the camera will underline Pierres trance as he slips into his mothers words. Having spoken the other, he literally falls asleep, letting his tears fall where they may.
BIO: Chris Tysh teaches creative writing and women's studies at Wayne State University in Detroit. Her books include Porne, Coat of Arms, and In the Name.
