Docteur Jekyll et les femmes

Polish-born director Walérian Borowczyk (1923-2006) had one of the strangest careers in cinema, from acclaimed animation films alongside Chris Marker in the 1950s to erotic movies unfairly dismissed by many as soft porn. The time has come to reassess his peculiar genius. The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Miss Osbourne may seem like conventional horror material. But this radical reworking of Stevenson’s novel emphasises two things: a philosophical debate on rational empiricism versus transcendent metamorphosis, and a surrealistic brand of feminism that insists on women’s desire and complicity in the violent eroticism unleashed by Jekyll’s ‘weird science’.
As always, Borowczyk’s minutely artisanal, baroque style renders the past as a strange, luminous, trembling place, full of beguiling toys, hidden chambers and transgressive games of love and death.