“A Song of Love” is French writer Jean Genet's only film,
which he directed in 1950. Because of its explicit (though artistically presented) homosexual content, the
26-minute movie was long banned and even disowned by Genet later in his life.
The plot is set
in a French prison, where a prison guard takes voyeuristic pleasure in
observing the prisoners perform masturbatory sexual acts. In two adjacent
cells, there is an older Algerian - looking
man and a handsome convict in his twenties. The older man is in love with the
younger one, rubbing himself against the wall and sharing his cigarette smoke
with his beloved through a straw.
The prison
guard, apparently jealous of the prisoner's relationship, enters the older
convict's cell, beats him, and makes him suck on his gun in an unmistakably
sexual fashion. However, the inmate drifts off into a fantasy where he and his
object of desire roam the countryside. In the final scene, it becomes clear
that the guard's power is no match for the intensity of attraction between the
prisoners, even though their relationship is not consummated.
Genet does not use dialogue in his film, but focuses instead on
close-ups of bodies, on faces, armpits, and penises. The film's highly sexualized
atmosphere has been recognized as a formative factor for works such as the
films of Andy Warhol.
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