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A seemingly all-too-ideal collaborative relationship, it's fitting that the final major works from both Walerian Bororczyk and surrealist writer André Pieyre de Mandiargues in their respective fields would be intertwined. Although Love Rites (Cérémonie d'amour), Borowczyk's 1987 final feature film was an adaptation of what would become Mandiargues final novel, Tout disparaîtra, from the same year, as the leading name on Borowczyk Daniel Bird notes in the commentary track for the recently restored print of Love Rites released through Kino Lorber, the working relationship between Borowczyk and Mandiargues was much more than Borowczyk merely adapting Mandiargues' writing for film. First introduced through Argos Films head Anatole Dauman (1) who had previously produced Borowczyk and Chris Marker's short Les astronautes (The Astronauts, 1959) as well as Marker's La jetée (1961) which featured Borowczyk's wife Ligia Branice, Borowczyk and Mandiargues were kindred spirits with nearly identical tastes in various artistic mediums. Their first collaboration, Une collection particulière (A Private Collection, 1973), a mock-documentary on the “history” of erotic artefacts, most hand-crafted by Borowczyk for the purposes of the short, featured not only Mandiargues' narration but his own hands demonstrating many of the objects. Une collection particulière was originally included as an introductory short to Borowczyk's anthology film Immortal Tales (Contes immoraux, 1973), the first segment of which, “The Tide” (La marée) was based on a Mandiargues story. Mandiargues' 1967 Prix Goncourt winning novel The Margin served as the source for Borowczyk's La marge (1976) starring Sylvia Kristel and Joe Dallesandro, while Borowczyk's return to the anthology format also saw him returning to Mandiargues, the “Marceline” segment of Immoral Women (Les héroïnes du mal, 1979) taken from Mandiargues' 1946 story “The Blood of the Lamb (Le sang de l'angeau). Borowczyk's working relationship and friendship with Mandiargues also extended to Mandiargues' wife, the artist Bona, the two collaborating on a short film, Venus on the Half-Shell (Escargot de Vénus, 1975) featuring Bona's drawings of erotic snail/human hybrids. As Bird also states in his commentary track for Love Rites, Mandiargues and Bona were two of the few professional collaborators whom Borowczyk formed close personal friendships with (1). Also among this select few was Marina Pierro, who following Behind Convent Walls (Interno di un convento, 1978) became Borowczyk's leading actress-of-choice. Pierro once recalled one of her fondest memories of Mandiargues; a visit to his house in Place des Vosges by herself and Borowczyk to pick up Mandiargues' written introduction to Borowczyk: Cinéaste onirique, the coffee table book released alongside The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Miss Osborune (Docteur Jekyll et les femmes, 1981) in France, Mandiargues proclaiming to Pierro he would never forget the image of her face in the film (2). From Pierro's perspective, the '80s were “very rich from the point of creativity”(2) for Borowczyk. However, the '80s were also a time of many false starts, with Borowczyk's dream project of a Nefertiti film as well as the erotic drama Ancestral Mansion, which was to star Kate Bush and Terrance Stamp, never materializing. Come the mid-'80s, the type of filmmaking Borowczyk had become associated with was considered out-of-time, the gaps in-between features becoming longer following The Art of Love (Ars Amandi, 1983). Although it's well-known now that he left directorial duties early in the production to focus on second-unit work, Borowczyk's name being left on Emmanuelle 5 (1987) certainly did him no favors in terms of future film projects finding eager backers. Borowczyk did spend a lot of the 80's designing and building a home as Bird attests in his Love Rites track while also making a return to the animated short with Scherzo infernal (Infernal Symphony, 1984). Given the state of the film marketplace in France in the mid-to-late 80's, Bird also suspects that Borowczyk could foresee his exit from features in the near future (1). Love Rites then becomes not only an appropriate final feature film, but a rather eerie one as well with its preoccupation on endings. Although many of its themes were central to Mandiargues' work, Mandiargues too seemed to be in a similar state with a fixation on finality, the title of his novel Love Rites is based, “Tout disparaîtra”, translating to “Everything Will Disappear” or “Everything Disappears” (or “Vanishes”). While Mandiargues is typically cited as the surrealist associate, La marée was specifically written by Mandiargues for the 1959 International Surrealist Exhibition by request of André Breton (3), Borowczyk was greatly admired among the surrealists in his own right. As Pierro said, “It is enough to think of what André Breton said about his cinema, coining his famous definition of “the striking imagination”(2)[i]. Pierro also acknowledged May Ray's recognition of the value Borowczyk brought to animation (2) as well as pioneering dadaist and surrealist Max Ernst's admiration of Borowczyk (2). For Pierro, it was Borowczyk's collaborative relationship with Mandiargues that was “the apex of an artistic process”(2). As much as Love Rites is about endings, it was also a return to what Bird reefers to as surrealism in the “classic literary sense”(1), Borowczyk and Mandiargues' literary surreal passion play set amidst the backdrop of contemporary '80s Paris. Although Mathieu Carrière's Hugo Arnold is the first of the two main players to be introduced, it is of course Pierro who takes center stage. En route to view a collection of Fortuny gowns, self-centered garment seller Hugo spots prostitute Myriam (Pierro) on the Paris metro. Both amused and transfixed by her public beauty routine, Hugo eagerly dashes after Myriam through the subway. After confirming his suspicions regarding Myriam's profession, much to his excitement, the two set out and about Paris in what Myriam refers to as their “act”, making various pit stops, including the Saint-Germain-des-Prés church and a park, eventually arriving at the boudoir of Myriam's mentor, the mysterious Sarah Sand. Upon entering Myriam's and Sarah Sand's realm, Hugo finally assumes the dominant position, only for Myriam to reverse the roles, stripping Hugo of not only his prized clothing, shoes and watch, but literally clawing away at his person, his entire sense of self. Compared with Borowczyk's other features, Love Rites is the most closely related to La marge. Superficially connected by their contemporary Paris settings, though more substantially both feature-length Mandiargues adaptations center on the concept of prostitution in the context of adopting “roles” or “parts”. The title of “Tout disparaîtra” ultimately being the end result of both “plays” for the male characters in both films. Both films are somewhat similar in tone as well, rather fatalistic, though La marge is decidedly more morose whereas Love Rites feels more bizarre and at times even vaguely threatening, French actor Jean Négroni's ominous narration resembling the reading of a gothic horror tale. Love Rites is also a decidedly more esoteric affair with an even bigger focus on not simply the theatricality and performative nature of the prostitute/client relationship, but as the title “Love Rites” implies, the ritualistic aspect as well. “Cérémonie d'amour” may have been a re-titling at the producers' insistence, though the title, along with Hugo's severance of identity that “Tout disparaîtra” implies, are indicative of ideas that occur throughout several Mandiargues narratives. In his commentary Bird singles out the name of Rebecca Nul, the protagonist of Mandiargues' The Motorcycle (La motocyclette, 1966)(1). “Nul” as in “null” or “nothing”, the various cérémonies d'amour performed by Nul and her lover Danial Lionart in Mandiargues' novel all rather ritualistic and sacrificial in nature. Similarly, Myriam's declaration of submission in Sara Sand's apartment, Hugo then binding her hands, recalls the submissive agreement made between Vanina, the young woman at the heart of Mandiargues' The Girl Beneath the Lion (La fille suous le lion, 1958) and her nameless lover. Tout disparaîtra and in turn Love Rites also also comparable with “Marceline”/“Le sang de l'angeau”, with Myriam drawing the blood and turning the tables on a male sacrificial figure, Hugo. Further emphasizing Borowczyk's deliberate theatricality, the titular, sacrificial Cérémonie d'amour occurs during what Négroni's voice-over announces as “Act 2” the moment Myriam and Hugo cross the threshold into Sara Sand's apartment. Aesthetically, “Act 2” feels more, if not surreal than slightly more fantastical merely by virtue of Borowczyk's visual design when compared with Borowczyk's more documentary style of the first half or “act” of the film. Certainly Sarah Sand's apartment, and indeed Myriam herself seem of a different, almost otherworldly realm with Myriam's Sadeian tales of Sarah Sand's sadistic mute Cambodian slave Ping. Yet as David J. Bond wrote in his introduction to The Fiction of André Pieyre de Mandiargues in 1982, Mandiargues' realm is “a world of fantasy where the rules of the everyday no longer apply and where anything may happen.”(4). Therein lies the subtle brilliance of Love Rites. The entire film, despite Borowczyk shooting the majority of the film in a documentary style, is a surrealist, at times almost mythological fantasy with “realist” contemporary 80's Parisian life happening on the periphery. Being again a “literary” surrealist film, its Mandiargues' words that place the narrative in the realm of the fantastic. Both the dialogue as well as the narration are loyal to Mandiargues' original wording in Tout disparaîtra, some of Mandiargues' most lyrical and artificial. Here too, Borowczyk is perhaps even more deliberate in...