All language subtitles for Dimanche apres-midi (Jean-Claude Brisseau, 1966-1967) - English subs

We dream about what we've lost,

what we've never had,
what we'll never have.

We dive deep within a world

that is only calm, joy,
plenitude and happiness.

To wake up is to be born again

in the world of despair.

Nothing distinguishes the
memory from the other moments.

They're only recognized later on.

The dream that ended

opened the wound.

It had started to bleed yesterday.

It had been five years since she,
who was his whole childhood

who he didn't think he loved
that much, had left him

Even the beginning had been terrible.

He did not know he had the
ability to suffer that much.

And then

There had been the nights,

the nights that reminded him that
his whole being was distraught.

But the nights are sometimes short.

And the sickness had turned into poison.

And this poison,
which was gaining ground

in his body, day after day,

had made his life something
that resembled Hell.

This venomous body caused
such ravages inside of him

That, sometimes, he would have
liked to be able to scream.

Scream for hours, alone, in his corner.

It was an insidious sickness,
tenacious and impalpable.

A sickness that left him helpless,

he who never had to
struggle against anything.

Yet one night,

sleep gave him a chance
to see her again,

more beautiful than he
had ever known her to be,

Even more beautiful than his mother,
when she caressed his lips,

kissing him to get him to
sleep when he was a child.

He felt such a violent delight,

so intense, that every night,

every day since,

he has been inhaled by this inner world.

The only one which was not intolerable.

Childhood is the geometrical
place of all nostalgias

Humanity at the center
of its misfortune,

will search in its prehistory,

a golden age, an earthly paradise
during which she would have lived,

bathed in the light.

For the individual,
the approach is the same.

Yet, looking at it more closely,

childhood is the most
atrocious period of existence.

These are the long years of anguish,

the recurring nightmares.

These are also the sting of slaps,

the punishments,

the aborted hopes,

the long waits, lived in a time
which seems to have no end.

It's also the center of gravity

of all the serious and
definitive cracks.

He remembered

a scene from when he
was 5 or 6 years old.

His family had a young and
very beautiful housemaid,

Mademoiselle Pierre.

One evening,

she was lying, lightly
dressed, on the couch,

reading.

He was close to her.

He asked her

if he could slip under her skirt.

She said yes on the condition that
he wouldn't say anything to anyone.

She was barely clothed

and he touched her belly.

Since, he has kept

a raging and agonizing curiosity
to see the female body.

He remembered again the extreme eagerness
he experienced when having a bath,

waiting for the naked
servant to get in the water.

He remembered that he
had another housemaid,

who was young and beautiful too,

and who had abscesses on her thighs
that she used to push in the evening.

He looked forward to this moment
to satisfy his curiosity.

He then remembered a scene.

They had all sat together,

The two servants, the cook,
his brother and himself.

He suddenly heard
Mademoiselle Pierre say:

"We could probably do
this with his brother"

"But he's too clumsy,
he would certainly fail".

He didn't really understand
what she meant by that

but he felt humiliated all
the same and started crying.

Mademoiselle Pierre tried to console him

and told him that a servant,
who had done that with a little boy,

had been sent to prison
for several months.

But he didn't think she had
done forbidden things with him.

The picture of old age is twofold.

By the wasting away of the flesh,

it outrages the conscience.

It assaults the ego
who watches, powerless

the spectacle of the growing
indifference from others

before this pile of flesh
and bone, wrinkling,

emptying and which will soon frighten.

Old age is in a way the
mark of pestilence,

The sign which alerts the others
that they must take their distances,

for fear of seeing in themselves
rise again the anguish and the doubt

that they had so much difficulty to
bury under a heap of indifference.

But perhaps, the forced
respite of the senses

marks the start of the liberation.

The purpose of the grave
is to make a distinction

between the human corpse and
other objects such as stones.

What we call death is the
conscience that we have of it.

We perceive the transition from
the state of living to the corpse,

that is to say the
harrowing object for a man

that is the corpse of another man.

It reflects a violence
that will not only

destroy one man but which
will destroy all the men.

The dead person is a danger
for those who remain,

If they bury it, it is not
to protect it but rather

to protect themselves
from this contagion.

This mess, this putrefaction to come,

just like the fresh corpse,

is the image of destiny

and carries in itself a threat.

We don't believe in the
contagious magic anymore

but who among us could say

that at the sight of
a worm-filled corpse,

they would not turn pale?

Freud in Mourning and Melancholia:

Melancholia is the reaction
to the loss of a loved one.

It is characterized on
a psychological level

by a profoundly painful dejection

and a cessation of interest
for the outside world.

But also by the inhibition
of all activity

and a lowering of the
self-regarding feelings

that finds utterance in

self-reproaches and self-revilings,
and culminates in a delusional

expectation of punishment.

The patient represents his
ego to us as worthless,

incapable of any achievement,

and morally despicable,

he reproaches himself

and expects to be cast out and punished

The picture of this
delusion of inferiority

is completed by the
defeat of the instinct

which compels every living
thing to cling to life.

The process features a regression
to the original narcissism.

One characteristic makes
this affliction interesting.

The melancholic's cathexis in
regard to the loved and lost one

has undergone a double vicissitude.

Part of it has regressed,

but the other part has been carried
back to the stage of sadism.

It is this sadism alone that solves
the riddle of the tendency to suicide.

We have long known, it is true,

that no neurotic harbours
thoughts of suicide which

he has not turned back upon himself

from murderous impulses against others

The analysis of melancholia
now shows that the ego

can kill itself only if

it can treat itself as the object

of love at the same time hostile.

We observe that in two
opposed situations,

love at its most extreme and suicide,

the ego is literally crushed

by the object.