Mel’s

The Lesbian Supper

The Handmaiden (2016) dir. Park Chan-wook

The Favourite (2018) dir. Yorgos Lanthimos

Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019) dir. Celine Sciamma

The trend of miniature eye portraits being used as tokens of love originated in 1785 with the secret marriage between Prince George of Wales and Maria Anne Fitzherbert. They allowed secret lovers to send a memento in which the owner of the eye was recognizable only to the recipient.

Summer time - July 2020  

Treignac - France 

Dites-moi un chiffre. Vingt-huit.

“The love between the characters is part of the language of the film…. There is this line in which they say that love is inventing something as you go along. Love is like a language that you didn’t speak an hour ago. So I wanted that love between the characters to become a love between the characters and the viewers of the film. I wanted to make something that breaks your heart.”

“…this number didn’t mean anything before the film, but it will suddenly: it’s that language that you now speak and a world you become part of. It belongs to the film but will live beyond the film. I want people to get ‘page 28’ tattoos. I wonder if anyone will hide notes at that page. I know that now when I want to hide something in a book, I’ll put it on page 28.”

Capucine, 1958, photo by Peter Basch