THE GARDEN OF EARTHLY DELIGHTS
"METAPHYSICS"
Grand Prix 2004 Rome International Film Festival
starring Claudine Spiteri, Chris Nightingale
produced by Guido Cerasuolo, Lech Majewski
production designer Susanna Codognato
costumes Catherine Buyse Dian
music Lech Majewski, Jozef Skrzek
casting Carrie Hilton, Evar Morovy
sound Jeremy Adamson, Lech Branski
editor Eliot Ems
written, directed, and shot by Lech Majewski
"This film puts to shame most other love stories in its honesty. Within a very philosophical framework, Majewski manages to tell an astonishingly human story. The staggering weirdness of being human - frail, material, dependent, and filled with ideas and aspirations that transcend everything - is the most surreal of all visions, and Majewski captures it. 'The Garden of Earthly Delights' is among the most powerful films made in years." Philip Kennicott, The Washington Post
"There is magic in The Garden of Earthly Delights' intimate passion plays, which are filled with loving detail and are mounted without a hint of pretension. Each moment becomes achingly gorgeous, not least because of Claudine Spiteri's disarmingly straightforward performance. The movie's philosophy is lucid and humane: Life is precious because it is short." R. Emmet Sweeney The Village Voice
"Stunning visuals and a sizzling performance by Claudine Spiteri: You're going to love this film and run out to see everything Majewski has directed." V.A. Musetto New York Post
"A virtuoso tale of intense love story full of passion and tenderness." Piero Zanotto, Il Gazzettino Venezia
"Rich delight!.. Each of Majewski's frames is a treasury of visual delight. This is truly a Venice film for the connoisseur: elegant, erotic, and steeped in the mysterious beauty of the city." Barbara Scharres, Chicago Art Institute
"Elegant… Lech Majewski's musicality is evident in the fresh and lively flow of images." Nathan Lee The New York Times
"A luminous, highly erotic treatise on art, love and death." Andrea Gronvall Chicago Reader
"Abiding intelligence!" Time Out London
"Majewski's Garden of Earthly Delights definitely won't be forgotten." Raven Snook Time Out New York
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Devastated by his girlfriend's death, a man jumps from three bridges, one after the other, in Venice. He's not attempting suicide, just fulfilling a promise. Then he roams around London, inseparable from the video camera he uses to film the places where they'd been together. He compiles the clips he's filmed over the previous year into a personal film, a kind of visual diary documenting a relationship full of unusual eroticism.
A thirty-year-old Englishwoman of Italian extraction, Bea Cossan, and Luis Malten, five years her senior, meet in London and fall in love at first sight. She's an art historian specializing in the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch, he's a maritime engineer writing a PhD on gondola construction. They share a passion for interpreting the hidden language of symbols. When they film details from The Garden of Earthly Delights, Bea, almost like Dante's Beatrice, guides Luis through the tangled web of meanings.
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