Search - Passion in the Desert on DVD

A song without words.

Shadowfire | College Park, MD | 01/29/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

""Passion in the Desert" is not the most original film I've ever, but it comes close. As a previous reviewer has noted, abstracting it into a "man falls in love with leopard" scheme is imperceptive, because, quite frankly, it is not a film about love, but about madness; or perhaps it is about love as madness; or perhaps it is about situations where both love and madness are inapplicable. The film has strong Zen tendencies; it takes long looks. We see desert plants. Occasional animals. Lots of sand. Hot, shifting, yellow sand. Endless expanse of blue, cloudless sky. The camera will hover for a bit, and we're thinking, "This is just setup, there will be a pan to a character, or a gruesome scene," but no, the scenery is the point. It's pretty, and that's enthralling enough.In the beginning of the film we are introduced to Augusten, a soldier of rank in Napoleon's army. Augusten's task is to make sure Venture, the wizened artist sent to capture the charms of Egypt on paper, doesn't come to harm. Lagging behind the rest of the army, the two get lost in a sandstorm ("Simoom - the breath of the desert!"). Soon they are running out of water, and Augusten is on the edge of hysteria ("You can't get lost in Egypt! There's the Nile, and there's the sea!"). The men part. At this point, the film shifts from dialog to pure emotion, pure sensation. There's a nice parallel between the scenes in which Venture drinks his paints ("A tasty color!") and shoots himself, and Augusten puts his dying horse out of its misery. Augusten stumbles into a Bedouin camp and rips open a waterskin and extatically gulps water. There are several such scenes. He is pursued by riders, who draw back when Augusten enters a rocky labyrinth of cliffs and caves ("Let the jinn catch him," they mutter).The film enters the main course when the "jinn" is revealed to be a leopard. At first Augusten hears it, then meets it face to face and is frightened by the beast. The leopard is magnificent. Its eyes glow like candles. At first she treats him like a jackal, only letting him drink after she's done. In another scene she looks on contemptuously as Augustus scurries to a carcass of a deer, but soon this scene becomes a bizarre dinner party. Soon Augusten adapts to the situation. His manner is looser; he has, at least for now, survived. He lounges in the sun; he parades ants ("About face!"). He plays slow-motion cat and mouse with the leopard. Perhaps he is mad, perhaps he simply has nothing else to do. As the beast gets used to his presence, even comes to enjoy it, Augusten falls in love with her, possibly to humour himself. He follows it, suggesting names. He holds her by the front paws and dances. They caress and lick each other. There's a nice scene where Augusten pretends to be a jinn and steals a goat kid from a herder boy, and a scene wher Simoom seems to prefer another leopard to him, so he paints spots on himself...The sound track is an eclectic mix of symphonic and eastern melodies, harmoniously accenting scenes. It is another venue of communication in a film that largely eschews dialog in favor of visual and aural lexicons, and meets great success."