The Malady of Death poster

The Malady of Death

1985 · 65 min

Drama

not streaming

In the space of a short 65 minutes, a woman enters the luxury apartment of a wealthy man with an eccentric fascination for the female form and is paid both for her sexual favors and for lying there naked and letting him examine the aesthetics of her body. For most of the hour, as the concise narration of Marguerite Duras' novel on eroticism and aesthetics fills the aural gaps, actress Marie Colbin's form fills the visual gaps. But unless viewers consider the feminine eyeball or microscopic views of skin exotic and worth lingering over, the eroticism lies more in the imagination than on the screen. In fact, the female body lying on the bed, taken away from the spirit that animates it, is really just a corpse -- raising the question, exactly what is the "malady of death?"

Crew

  • Director Peter Handke
  • Screenplay Peter Handke
  • Director of Photography Xaver Schwarzenberger

Cast

Crew

External reads

No articles linked yet.

🔥 Hot takes

warming up the wall…

Intermission

GO DEEPER

Turn the obscurity dial up. There's a lot further down to go.

Deal me more

Metadata & streaming data: TMDB (JustWatch). This product uses the TMDB API but is not endorsed or certified by TMDB.