Charles et Félicien

Charles Baudelaire, the greatest poet, and Felicien Rops, the greatest engraver artist of their time, met on several occasions at the Saint-Loup church, wich both admired. A master piece of baroque art, this church is charged with emotion for those remembering that there, on March 15th 1866, Baudelaire collapsed, an early warning of the illness which was to cause his death, a few months later. The film underlines what these two men and their art had in common : the woman, skeleton (as a death symbol), erotism, satanism, dandyism... Baudelaire's dark melancholy casts a different light on Rop's work which thus acquires a certain gravity. The magnified images of the church come in opposition with the profane art of the painter-engraver corrected by the poet's funereal curses.