Therese and Isabelle

One of the late director Radley Metzger’s best-known works that never received a proper restoration in his lifetime—a modernist, time-traveling cinematic take on Violette Leduc’s 1955 novel (which, itself, was not published uncensored for nearly 50 years), the story of two schoolgirls whose friendship transforms into a powerful affair. Essy Persson’s Therese is unceremoniously dumped at a prestigious boarding school, so that her mother and hated stepfather can seek their own pleasures, where she meets the precocious Isabelle (a perhaps too-old- for-the-role Anna Gael). What follows is the first flowering of sapphic love, gorgeously lensed in black and white Panavision with a lush George Auric score. Therese and Isabelle has been restored in the French language version preferred by the director, yet rarely screened.

The audience for pictures like Therese and Isabelle is the young moderns. They are young, they feel enlightened. Permissiveness being what it is, people expect a certain frankness. But to say that they come to Therese and Isabelle solely to see sex is like saying that they will go to The Detective solely to hear Frank Sinatra say ‘screw’.

PRODUCTION: Audubon Films

RESTORATION CURATED BY: Nicolas Winding Refn, Peter Conheim – byNWR - Denmark / Cinema Preservation Alliance-U.S.
Dr. Tværgade 7, 1. Sal
DK-1302 – Copenhagen, Denmark
Tel. +1 5104210606
peter@bynwr.com
http://www.bynwr.com

LABORATORY: Spracklen Film and Video (image), Audio Mechanics (audio)

WORLD SALES: Peter Conheim – byNWR
Dr. Tværgade 7, 1. Sal
DK-1302 – Copenhagen, Denmark
Tel. +45 40891174
peter@bynwr.com
http://www.byNWR.com

PRESS OFFICE: Peter Conheim – byNWR
Dr. Tværgade 7, 1. Sal
DK-1302 – Copenhagen, Denmark
Tel. +45 40891174
peter@bynwr.com