The Pierrot's Love-A Play In a Play

THE PIERROT'S LOVE
Screenplay by
Ana Claudia Antunes

Based upon the homonymous novel
© 2010 Dancing As One Productions

“Your soul is as a moonlit landscape fair,
Peopled with maskers delicate and dim,
That play on lutes and dance and have an air
Of being sad in their fantastic trim.

Then while they celebrate in minor strain
Triumphant love, effective enterprise,
They have an air of knowing all is vain,—
And through the quiet moonlight their songs rise,

The melancholy moonlight, sweet and lone,
That makes to dream the birds upon the tree,
And in their polished basins of white stone .
The fountains tall to sob with ecstasy.“
Paul Verlaine.

BLACK SCREEN

SUPER: A Dance As One Production

OVER BLACK

A continuous furious sound of frantic fingers typing over a computer's keyboard.

FADE IN

Sc 1 INT KITCHEN DAY Sc 1

A long-haired blond woman on her middle forties is seated on a wooden chair in front of the kitchen table typing on her netbook. On the screen we can see she's been searching over the net, browsing on Google the words, "All is Vanity":

ANNE'S MOTHER
Shoot! That's already taken.

CUT TO

The woman is now with her hands over her head, mumbling with her voluminous hair covering half of the computer screen.

ANNE'S MOTHER
Ah! All is Love...it's all about love.
It has always been about love. Love, Love, Love!!

In the screen the words "THE PIERROT'S LOVE" appear like a magic trick, dancing over the keyboard, or rather trembling, and reaching out to the screen as if superimposed into another image, the words give place then to a black and white scene.

OVER BLACK

A continuous sound of frantic fingers typing over a computer's keyboard. Each word appearing on the scene one by one:
CHAPTER I: A PLAY INSIDE A PLAY

SUPERIMPOSE: "PARIS 1899"

Sc 2 EXT. STREETS OF PARIS - NIGHT Sc 2

Dark, slippery sidewalks, wet streets. Seen through a ghostly appearance in a window's shop a shadow of a man approaching. A gas street lamp lightens up the ambiance where we can read the names of the two streets the man had just crossed, "Magnolias" and "Camelias". The man gets out of the shop with a bouquet of flowers in his hand. He heads to the Vaudeville Theatre that's just across the street from the flower shop. But before he arrives to the theatre he enters into a Cafe instead. He looks up and reads the name of the coffee shop.

ANDREW
Cafe au Fleur, bien sur!

Sc 3 INT. CAFE - NIGHT Sc 3

ANDREW enters the small room leaving behind him a wet footprint mixed with the mud that had splashed over his shoes. His hat and coat drips water inside the coffee place as well. The owner looks at him with a grumpy face. Andrew sits in a chair and asks a waitress for a coffee, Andrew continues to drink his coffee frantically from the small cup, taking small sips with less than a second on each interval. He takes out his hat and puts it over the table, brushing the top with his fingers, without paying attention to the woman on the table beside him.

WOMAN
Oh, that' so rude!

The woman takes her bag up and points it to complain to the man that he had spilled water on her purse. Andrew finishes his coffee, taking a last sip from the white cup and sets the artifact made of Chinese porcelain over the small saucer. He then pours some coins over the table. He looks at the door and observes people walking on the street. He watches the clock every five seconds, like a nervous tic, he gets carried out with an anxiety that keeps growing as a hungry animal. He leaves the coffee house. He looks the place from the outdoor. We can see the sign in the tent over the cafe written in rococo words “Cafe Au Fleur”. He takes a deep breath in and smells the flowers and takes one of the roses from the bouquet that he nervously grab with too much more intensity than it seems necessary and puts the flower inside the front pocket from his coat.

Sc 4 INT. THEATRE - NIGHT Sc 4

“Moonlight Sonata” by Beethoven is playing. The man opens the heavy door made of thick wood and enters the old building. There in the dressing room lies another flower on a canape. The man looks pale when he watches a young woman changing her clothes through the mirror. He remembers their first conversation, her voice comes to his mind like a whisper dressed in small gusts of wind.

THERESE (V.O.)
My love...

The voice gets stronger as he keeps reminding of old scenes.

THERESE
(distressed)
The world of actors...
She will not be part of it!

ANDREW
What if she wants to be an actress? What if?

THERESE (V.O.)
I don't think girls should worry about this.
Besides...I HAVE HIGH HOPES FOR HER.

Sounds of a train wagon rolling through its trails over the hard friction made of steel gets mixed with her strong statement as her voice increases in size and shape.

A pale apparition of a ghostly image reveals a woman seated in the canape, searching for a cigarette and crossing her legs as she tries to light it up.

THERESE
God forbid she will have to suffer like I did.
I grieve just by thinking about it-
(looking at an empty space over the wall separating ANDREW from the young woman getting dressed on the other room)
And hopefully she will find a nice decent man to look after her.

ANDREW lost in his own reverie and frozen in icy introspection, keeps still, looking back at her with glassy eyes.

Sc 5 INT. DRESSING ROOM - NIGHT Sc 5

A young lady with no more than her thirties, but looking much younger, shakes her hands in a frenzy motion, waving at him from behind the curtain, without showing her face.

TALITA
Alo, Andrew!

ANDREW
(Still talking to a phantom appearance of Therese)
But I guess I just have got into this bad habit of talking to myself, or rather talking at you, instead of to you. (He looks then to Talita trying to see who's behind the curtain) The same goes as if I were talking with your dead, I mean dear mother, that of course if she were still with us.

The girl opens the curtain, swooping it with a snap, curls the rope that holds part of the mantle elevated, caresses it between her fingers and takes the soft fabric around her hand leaving a knot hanging to reveal her voluptuous body. Holding the drape still she gives him a gentle smile and blinks her right eye.

TALITA
(giggling with a somewhat disturbing sound)
Mais, Andrew, elle n'est pas la, n'est-ce pas?
She's not with us anymore, or is she??
It's been such a long time...
(jumping to his arms and embracing him in a tender lace)
...since the last time I saw you!

ANDREW
(To himself)
She changes the subject as she changes her clothes...

TALITA
(dancing and turning in front of him)
I am so happy that you are here I could fly!
(stretching her arms wide, spinning around, her face against his) Merci!

ANDREW
(kissing her in the cheek and whispering into her ears)
How I hungered to taste those lips...

He kisses her into the lips, but TALITA's face changes to an older woman and he is now kissing the ghostly image of Therese.