Eros, o Basileus

The film is comprised of nine sequences, each dwelling on a single occurrence or situation. A young man representing Eros is first seen sitting contemplatively on a stool near a bare bed. He slumps and begins untying his shoe. Later he crawls to the bed. He lies on the bed, sits forlornly, half-dressed, at the foot of the bed, lies on the bed with some books and a notebook, and stretches out on the bed wearing only socks. He is blind. His hands move up the form of a dressmaker's female dummy, but as they approach the dummy's head he does not see that his hands have traveled past the headless neck toward his own head seen in the mirror behind. The young man reaches for some books (one of the authors is Paul Valéry) and a self-portrait of Corot (which reflects or suggests his own image). He temporarily withdraws into a stack of paintings, but emerges to mime Eros shooting his arrows. Near an altar-like structure, the young man sits on the floor, tries on motorcycle helmets, and strikes muscular poses, imitating the figure in Rodin's "Age of Bronze." A poster of Marlon Brando in The Wild One is lighted as an icon. With a muscleman pinup surmounted by a black crucifix in the background, he feels the warmth of a bare light bulb. [During the helmet and light bulb scenes, single-frame pans across the young man's body are intercut, revealing an arm lifting, a foot, the slope of a shoulder, a tapping finger, or his entire body.]