Many are the Images of Woman is poetic film with as intriguing opening sentence ‘This place is alive with vultures’. Several classical texts are quoted with a special role for Salomé. Medieval poetry, the evangelists, but also Chrysologus and Oscar Wilde are heard.Bloem: ‘It’s about Salomé and her mother Herodias: they have after all been introduced through the centuries as paragons of sin in word, image and music. What would women themselves make of it. Or want to make of it?! (…) The contemporary “Herodias” and “Salomé” dress in festive garb based on several Salomé paintings by Gustave Moreau, who allowed himself to be inspired by for instance texts by Flaubert, which are eagerly read by mother and daughter. In playing fragments by Oscar Wilde who provided the libretto for the Salomé opera by Richard Strauss, they give up. They don’t want to do the men’s bidding and decide to go their own way. When stepfather gets home late, the birds have flown. Their path leads them to Spain, to Aguëro, a village in Aragon where in the twelfth century victory over the Mussulmans was celebrated with a very remarkable pilgrimage. On two capitals here a dancer is portrayed surrounded by three musicians. This motif can be found everywhere else in Europe (for instance on and in the cathedral at Rouen, articulated by Flaubert). (…) In Aguëro in a beautiful, theatrical landscape with as backdrop the bizarre cliff of Los Mallos (…) there is music and dance with pleasure according to the rules of the troubadours: gai saber, cheerful knowledge.’
