A ground-breaking, exquisitely photographed early feminist film by Sally…
Thriller
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Since its release in 1980, Sally Potter's rewriting of Puccini's opera, La Boheme, has become a classic in feminist film theory. A model for the deconstruction of the Hollywood film, THRILLER turns the conventional role of women as romantic victims in fiction on its head. Mimi, the seamstress heroine of the opera who must die before the curtain goes down, decides to investigate the reasons for her death. In doing so, she begins to explore the dichotomy which separates her from the opera's other female character, the "bad girl" Musetta. As rich in sounds and imagery as it is theoretically compelling, THRILLER provides the female spectator with a long-awaited recognition of her version of the story.
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Distributor subjects
Cinema Studies; Film History; Experimental FilmKeywords
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[speaking Italian]
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[emotional music]
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[laughing]
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[orchestral music]
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(♪) Psycho (theme)- Bernard Herrmann (♪)
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- I am trying to remember to understand
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they were some bodies on the floor.
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One of them is mine. Did I die?
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Was I murdered?
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If so, who killed me
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and why?
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What does it mean?
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Do you remember being
in the room? The attic.
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Oh, Mimi, you were carried from the room.
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Lifted up and taken out of there.
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Carried away from the
attic. Yes. In arabesque.
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In Arabesque. Yes, I
was. That\'s important.
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I was in Arabesque.
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Frozen in Arabesque, your tiny hand.
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But I am told that the story is this
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La Boheme, an opera in four acts set in Paris
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Latin quarter in 1830.
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Act one four male artist, Rodolfo,
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a poet, shard a musician,
Marcello, a painter,
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and Colin, a philosopher,
are in an attic studio
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fighting the cold, playing around
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three of them go out to a cafe
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leaving Rodolfo alone.
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There is a knock at the door.
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It is Mimi, a seamstress
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and flower maker whose candle has gone out
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on the way up to her room.
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She comes in, they fall in love.
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Act two. Later that evening, Mimi
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and Rodolfo joined the others in the cafe.
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Musetta, who used to be the
lover of Marcello, arrives
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with a escort, a rich and elderly man.
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Lively scenes develops,
which ends with Musetta
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being carried away.
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A lost by the artist
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Act 3, Rodolfo has abandoned Mimi.
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She finds out why
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It is because he cannot bear to see her ill
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standing in the snow.
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Together they are passionately reunited
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for a short while.
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Act four in the attic.
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The four artists are again playing around.
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Suddenly Musetta rushes in
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bringing Mimi with her who is dying.
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They lay her on the bed. They
do what they can for her.
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But Mimi dies.
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Rodolfo throw himself
weeping over the body.
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Can this be the fact i
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Is that what really happened
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Is this the story of my life
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Was that the story of my death
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Is a reason for the murder
to be found in her reflection
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sitting in front of the
mirror, she waits for a clue.
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(heartbeating)
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When she first looked, she
recognized herself as the other.
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She saw Mimi there, cold, tired and ill.
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She saw timidity and vulnerability.
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(music)
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And then, as my image turned away,
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I saw the other side.
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Was it me?
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(heartbeat stops)
I remember it was a cold wintery night.
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I was going up the stairs.
My candle went out.
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I was coughing.
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I knocked on the attic door
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and that is when it all began.
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(opera singing)
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(opera singing stops)
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I know something was
happening in this attic.
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They were making something
in their call studio.
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Was it work?
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(music stops, violin screeches)
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Could they have been the artist
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that one who was searching
for his inspiration?
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He must have been the hero.
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Rodolfo and the other man.
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Was he shard the musician
or Marcelo the painter?
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Was he the philosopher Colin?
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Certainly they were in it together.
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(music)
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I know something was
happening in this attic
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for centuries.
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She have been jumping into his arms over
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and over again and I am
trying to understand.
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In act one when her candle went out,
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she lost her key in the darkness.
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They both searched for it.
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He found it
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and kept it hidden from her so
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that he could prolong their
meeting while he ang to her,
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your tiny Andy frozen
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as the elder key.
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She fell in love
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(opera singing)
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(opera singing stops, coughing)
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- Why was she coughing?
Always shivering and in pain.
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and later so alarming
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sitting in front of the mirror,
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I wait for a clue.
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(music)
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(music fades out)
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(irregular heartbeats)
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(heartbeat stops)
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Behind me in the room,
the attic, they were seen
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of romantic love and ambiguity.
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The woman was one removed,
silent and absent.
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The man wanted her. He
must have been the hero.
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The artist. Yes,
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(music)
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(music fades out)
It\'s all coming back.
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(music)
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They were making something
in their cool studio,
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Perhaps even an opera.
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But somehow the cold and poverty
in due is different to mine
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or that I\'m sure.
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Do they really suffer to
create in the way I must suffer
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to produce.
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I watched them come and go.
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Would that take part in my death?
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(music stops, violin screeches)
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(music, screeching stops)
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(music abruptly stops)
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Was there a fight?
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Would I have preferred to be zero?
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(heartbeats)
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(laughing, heartbeat stops)
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Would I have preferred to be zero?
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(music)
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(music abruptly stops)
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What if I have been the subject
of this scenario instead
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of its subject?
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I\'m trying to remember.
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Perhaps I could have understood was a clue
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to my desk, written in their text.
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(music)
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(music fades)
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(speaks French)
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Nothing is easy as to by ways
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of abstraction
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and purely the verdict
included in the future.
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(speaks French)
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Marks...
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Ideas are not
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transformed in the language in such a way
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that their particularity
are found, dissolved
00:21:08.767 --> 00:21:12.271
or that their social character
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near them in the language
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as in the price near the merchandise.
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The ideas do not exist, spread
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from the language marks.
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She was searching for a theory
that would explain her life,
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that would explain her death.
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They had written the books by reading.
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She hoped to understand.
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Meanwhile, that other woman
was watching and listening,
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(speaks French)
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Was she?
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(opera singing)
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The eternal Gazette, the bad
girl, the one who didn\'t die.
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(opera fades)
How then is it that I can
remember her death sin?
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(music)
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Was she the victim also?
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Was she Mimi?
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(music fades out, coughing)
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(coughing stops)
Oh, Mimi. Your tiny hand
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(music)
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Up against the wall.
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(music stops)
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Think about what you were doing.
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Carried away from the attic.
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Yes.
00:23:49.294 --> 00:23:52.264
(music)
00:23:54.366 --> 00:23:57.302
How could you let yourself be removed?
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You were reading in French.
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I had come towards you.
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What were you thinking of?
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I was listening and I was absent.
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You were carried away., certainly.
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You were reading from a book.
You were immersed in the text.
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I turned away from language became silent
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and was carried from the attic frozen.
00:24:42.481 --> 00:24:43.949
What were you thinking of?
00:24:45.650 --> 00:24:50.388
I was searching for a theory
that would explain my life.
00:24:53.158 --> 00:24:55.927
Was it true to my death
retained in that text?
00:24:58.063 --> 00:25:01.032
(speaks French, music fades out)
00:25:57.923 --> 00:26:00.892
(door opens, footsteps)
00:26:01.626 --> 00:26:04.596
(door closes)
00:26:13.638 --> 00:26:16.608
(footsteps)
00:26:19.377 --> 00:26:22.347
(door opens)
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(door closes)
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(laughing)
00:27:02.354 --> 00:27:04.990
(laughing stops)
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No, wait. The clue!
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suddenly I understand.
00:27:11.329 --> 00:27:15.233
There was me in the opera and
there was me in the attic.
00:27:18.303 --> 00:27:21.506
(music)
Act one. There is a knock at the door.
00:27:22.574 --> 00:27:27.112
It is Mimi, a seamstress, a flower maker..
00:27:27.112 --> 00:27:29.681
sewing certain flower who didn\'t smell
00:27:29.681 --> 00:27:34.586
after all often until
the early hours working
00:27:34.586 --> 00:27:38.123
with a cold and a candle of companions.
00:27:39.090 --> 00:27:42.560
They produce storage to disguise
00:27:42.560 --> 00:27:44.696
how I must produce their goods.
00:27:46.231 --> 00:27:51.236
Act four. Suddenly muta rushes in
00:27:51.503 --> 00:27:54.572
bringing Mimi with a with dime.
00:27:55.974 --> 00:28:00.211
They lay on the bed, they
do what they can for her,
00:28:01.079 --> 00:28:02.514
but Mimi dies.
00:28:03.481 --> 00:28:06.418
And what if my husband died
00:28:07.485 --> 00:28:09.287
without my death?
00:28:09.287 --> 00:28:12.323
My love with Rufo might
have born children.
00:28:13.191 --> 00:28:15.393
I would\'ve become a mother.
00:28:15.393 --> 00:28:18.630
I would\'ve had to work even
harder to give them food.
00:28:19.497 --> 00:28:24.002
But the erroring of such a
story doesn\'t just labor day
00:28:24.002 --> 00:28:26.104
and night to fill their children.
00:28:27.305 --> 00:28:31.242
And if they had let me leave,
00:28:31.242 --> 00:28:33.645
I would\'ve become an old woman.
00:28:33.645 --> 00:28:37.716
And an old seamstress would
not be considered the proper
00:28:37.716 --> 00:28:39.984
subject of a love story.
00:28:40.385 --> 00:28:43.354
(opera singing)
00:29:07.112 --> 00:29:09.380
I had to be young, single,
00:29:09.380 --> 00:29:14.319
and vulnerable with a death
that serve their desire
00:29:14.319 --> 00:29:17.689
to become heroes in the
display of their grief.
00:29:51.923 --> 00:29:53.892
The Paris resignation
00:29:53.892 --> 00:29:58.229
with which I accepted my life
was synonymous with my death.
00:29:59.564 --> 00:30:01.933
If Muta had died,
00:30:01.933 --> 00:30:04.869
it would not have been
considered a tragedy
00:30:04.869 --> 00:30:07.672
for she was an easy woman, a bad girl.
00:30:09.707 --> 00:30:14.479
We were set up as opposite
and complimentary characters
00:30:14.479 --> 00:30:17.782
and kept apart to serve our roles.
00:30:17.782 --> 00:30:20.752
(music abruptly stops)
00:30:23.421 --> 00:30:25.523
Yes, it was murder.
00:30:29.594 --> 00:30:31.396
We never got to know each other.
00:30:32.263 --> 00:30:34.332
Perhaps we could have loved each other.
00:31:03.428 --> 00:31:06.397
(heartbeats)