Le jardin des délices de Jérôme Bosch

Watching 1 November 2023, what makes the greatest impression is the final section on the “human city” wracked by war and atrocities. Picq strives to make comprehensible the connection between this self-destructiveness and the mix of disorder, chaos, eroticism and enjoyment that seems to define the hell that lies beneath it. But Picq’s insistence that the painting itself evades all order and is therefore uninterpretable functions as an obstacle to understanding that does not quite feel justified.

To this viewer, watching it as a double bill together with A DIRTY STORY is an illuminating experience that truly reveals the fascinating and unusual ensemble of Eustache's cinematic perspectives: a peep into human sexuality through the secret and provocative hole civilisation wants to hide, penetrating all the way through arts as the most sublime, bourgeois Parisians and rustic country life. An unobjective score given to call for proper appreciation of Eustache beyond THE MOTHER AND THE WHORE.