Original subtitles

A PRINCE

The story really began when Kutta arrived.

He was a delicate child

and very beautiful.

He never complained.

Perhaps I wasn't prepared to listen.

I never gave much thought to Kutta's mother or father.

I was vaguely aware of their existence in a faraway land,

but I believed them to be dead.

I loved them without imagining what they were like.

It's true,

I wasn't really capable of great tenderness.

I was always afraid he might break.

He always came home from school with good grades,

and he had no difficulty speaking French.

My father wanted him to become rich,

as if to better conceal the poverty of his origins.

As if money could purify him from a stain

which was, after all, purely imaginary,

made of all the silences and all the secrets.

My father, who ran a nursery in Sussex,

had given me a French destiny,

even calling me Françoise.

I returned regularly to England to visit him

and to bring back perennials from his nursery

which were still quite rare in France.

I used to come back with a carload of plants

which I planted in the garden of the school I had just set up.

Now we come to what made me want to embark on this project

when I came across this study

which put the plants in evolutionary order,

based on some tests they carried out.

When I saw that, I thought it was so beautiful.

It's like a musical score.

I want to make that real,

I want to make it concrete

so that people can see it, smell it, touch it, etc.,

see all these plants together.

A few of the plant families are tropical,

so we can't...

We can't grow them here outdoors.

Possibly in a greenhouse, some of them anyway.

But a large number of them can be grown outdoors in Normandy.

It was basically possible to plant the section

from the water lilies down to the monocots et eudicots.

In the project you have all the Calycanthus,

Magnoliaceae, Cloranthus, etc.

They're all there.

My brother Mark,

to escape the Thatcher years in England,

had joined me.

He is an accomplished botanist.

He works on some of the estates in Varengeville-sur-Mer.

He took an interest in my school

and wasn't short of advice for me.

He had embarked on a crazy botanical project

to recreate a primitive forest.

I had invited him in to talk about it

before Alberto took the students

to visit his garden in Sainte-Marguerite-sur-mer.

When I took over the school,

I saw all sorts of kids arriving from very different backgrounds.

You need a particular sensitivity

to be interested in horticulture when you're young.

Pierre-Joseph stood out.

Inspired and inscrutable.

The employers, local people, and the other students

sometimes mistook him for a half-wit.

In short,

he was the first child, before Kutta,

that I adopted.

Quillworts.

These quillworts comes from Corsica.

I lost them, sadly, with these hot, dry summers.

They are plants which thrive in damp soil.

I was steered towards an apprenticeship.

"It's your last chance," I was warned.

The teachers and my parents gave me a choice.

"Would you rather be a butcher or a florist?"

I chose flowers.

My father was a gunsmith and my mother a taxidermist.

I was enrolled in an apprenticeship

at a training college in Yvetot,

the town where I was born and which I hated.

I was dreading moving away from the river banks

where I'd had my first sexual experiences.

I was a shy, introverted child.

I had very few real friends

and I suffered from recurring nightmares

in which I was chased and killed by my parents.

But leaving the countryside stopped me enjoying that distance.

My parents had dogs that I looked after and loved

and that I considered to be my real family.

I often played alone with them

on the rounded hill covered with oaks and beeches

on our big property.

At least they seemed to want to make me human.

During the summer holidays I bade a long farewell to the dogs

and things started going badly wrong in my parents lives.

I can no longer bear

to be around you.

I can no longer bear to be

around you.

I cannot give

what is not within my power.

Perhaps even my life.

Roger!

My mother has always been an avid reader

of British and American fantasy novels.

She was convinced that a spirit she called Roger

was guiding her.

She had imaginary conversations with Roger.

Whenever I wasn't behaving the way she wanted me to,

she called me Peter

and refused to talk to me

until I'd assured her I wasn't Peter.

Which wasn't easy.

Her alcoholism only exacerbated her romanticism

and emotional issues.

She and my father argued all the time now

and took their frustrations out on me through verbal attacks.

It's a long centrepiece, with the flowers stuck in foam.

So you're going to have to use your knife.

But if you find it easier, you can use your secateurs.

That's fine too.

When you start an arrangement with foam,

give it a good soaking with water first.

And always start with the foliage. The foliage is your base.

It gives the piece its shape

and holds the flowers in place.

Since it's a long piece, I've put the leaves in first.

We'll go round.

I'm trimming everything.

- Hello, Mrs Brown. - Hello, Amélie.

- How are you? - Fine.

- Can I go through the back? - Go ahead.

Thank you.

- Good morning. - Hello.

- How are you? - I'm well, thank you.

- I'd like a word with Pierre-Joseph. - Go ahead.

Thank you very much.

- Hello, Mrs Brown. - Hello, Pierre-Joseph.

- How are you? - I'm good.

Are you learning new skills? What's this you're doing?

How is Pierre-Joseph getting on?

It's for a wedding.

- It's a long centrepiece. - Right.

I remember the first time I met my new class

at the training and apprenticeship college in Yvetot,

the 32 pairs of eyes watching me

with a mix of anticipation and fear, of reverence or distance.

Pierre-Joseph looked the other way.

He was miles away, his eyes on the swifts in flight,

taking him as far away as possible from the classroom.

This boy literally fell into my lap.

He caught me unawares.

His aloofness troubled me.

His avoidance of any contact made it hard to concentrate.

The morning dragged,

in spite of the optimistic tone I was trying

to convey to the adolescents in my botany class.

Despite my lack of teaching experience,

Françoise Brown had given me a job in her school.

"Because of your passion for plants and books, Alberto.

"Because you are well travelled.

"And for the erudition you have acquired

"from your direct observation of landscapes and people,

"at home, where they are at."

I found myself at her side on the first day of term.

Once silence was restored after the last parents had left,

she spoke.

"This is a special year."

Indeed it was! The child her marriage had denied her

had just arrived.

I was touched by the young Kutta,

by his thin face with its mix of Indian and Tibetan traits,

his light-brown skin over a frail body,

like so many others I had seen

in the valleys of Himachal Pradesh.

Alberto helped me welcome Kutta

and bring him closer to India from where I had uprooted him,

like a plant, how could I not think that,

which I had brought to my home

and which had adapted so perfectly.

He said nothing.

For a long time he showed no signs of violence,

despite being on the receiving end from his classmates.

I even got the impression

he took pleasure in being humiliated.

And I realised I was contributing to his submissiveness,

because I myself was dreadfully controlling,

in a caring way,

of all the children in my care.

My mother threw my father out of the house.

He sought refuge in his hunting lodge in Hugleville-en-Caux

a few kilometres from the house,

taking his dogs with him.

The lodge was always full of hunting friends.

Their passion was to drink and eat.

Sometimes I found my cousin there

and we made love.

He had an attractive cock with a pert glans,

a nice belly to set it off,

and balls that nestled nicely between his thighs.

He was doing an apprenticeship too,

but his penchant for hunting had led him to choose butchery.

Has everyone been served?

I had recently met Mino, a baker's apprentice,

who had very good contacts in the drug world

and who had bought enough hashish and LSD

for us to be able to spend a week getting wasted

in a hotel room.

During that time we nearly lost touch with reality,

retreating into a fantasy world.

- What are we shooting? - In the morning?

Yes, in the morning.

You must have some idea.

- Surprise. - There might not be any boar here.

If you go out scouting and you see tracks and rooting,

then they're here.

Only in the morning.

- That's too early. - You'll disturb them.

You'll push them away two hours before.

You'd be better off going two days before.

It has to be in the morning.

They're nocturnal.

Obviously, if you take a dog...

My father, who was always on the lookout for beaters,

asked me if I had any friends

who were interested in hunting.

I invited Mino, knowing how much hunters turned him on.

Have you got your hunting licence?

- Not yet, no. - No?

Is it hard to get?

Yes and no.

Meaning?

You have to pass various tests now.

There's practical tests and theory tests.

For the theory test, you go into a room.

And you have to identify an animal footprint.

Or, in a hunting situation,

you need to know if you can...

if you have the right to shoot or not.

During the first year of my apprenticeship

I became friends with Alberto, my botany teacher,

who, to my parents' amazement, grew fond of me.

My life at home had been nothing but chaos.

My mother kept threatening to kill us, my father and I,

or to commit suicide.

She stood at the top of the stairs in our house

and begged me to push her down them.

Hello.

I'm just looking.

I tried to stop her drinking,

but I had my own personal problems

and there wasn't much I could do.

The academic year was coming to an end.

I needed to find a new employer

if I wanted to continue on this path.

Françoise encouraged my mother to let me carry on.

To convince her, she told her I was an artist,

which made her laugh.

How much?

It's not for sale.

No, the colour's faded.

Okay.

Goodbye.

Are you all right?

Yes, I'm fine.

Is it a long time since you had a smoke?

Yes.

I filmed in Bhopal. We arrived in the night.

I arrived in the night.

I heard horns honking. I could see lorries in the distance.

And I thought...

about the Union Carbide gas tragedy.

And it was very moving.

I put it in my film.

And I thought of that boy I was trying to find.

I found him in the end.

We ran towards one another.

We hugged one another and cried.

I had met a boy who was already

more erotically inventive than me

with a taste for transgression.

I refused to see it as anything other than a dangerous game

which, at any moment, might leave me gasping for breath

the sticky morning of a hasty departure,

never to return.

I had been that boy,

capable of telling barefaced lies,

of betrayal without remorse,

and yet tortured by a fervent desire

to belong to someone,

to feel a steady hand weighing on my body.

Alberto had initiated me in love, in the names of flowers,

and in poets such as Novalis and Denys.

He sent me his first collection of poems,

"L'épreuve lyrique", which I kept by my bedside.

It was accompanied by a letter

telling me he'd be spending the summer in Portugal

but he'd see me in the autumn.

In the back of my father's Plymouth

as he sped through the night

to take him back to Yvetot,

Mino came in my mouth.

His cum, after a day in the forest, tasted of beechnuts.

Back at the cabin, I went into the shed

to hide in my father's dirty laundry cupboard

to inhale the piss-stained crotch

of his white Eminence underpants,

remembering Sunday evenings at the house

when, on returning from the hunt,

he made me take a bath with him.

The water caused his penis to swell and he stroked it,

which to me seemed

like the most captivating thing ever.

While my father was in hospital dying of leukaemia,

I wanted to live in the cabin.

My mother was strongly opposed to the idea.

Nevertheless, I decided to seek refuge there.

The cabin had been burgled,

the stuffed animals carted away,

the guns hidden under the table stolen.

I felt at peace there.

The cabin had been violated,

but basically the last traces of hunting had disappeared

and it was a relief.

All that remained was a photograph.

It showed my grandfather, my father and my uncles

proudly posing in front of a their tally of kills:

a dozen hares hung up.

Once again I was horrified at the sight of this slaughter.

I turned the image upside-down

to give the hares some dignity back.

My ancestors' upside-down heads made me laugh.

I decided this former hunting lodge would become a chapel,

Saint Hubert's Chapel,

dedicated to the animals slaughtered by my forefathers.

- Will you be okay? - Right...

- Hello, Mr Aubry. - Hello.

Here.

- Hello. - Pierre-Joseph,

who's come to work for you.

Odile!

- Hello. - Hello there.

- Hello. - How do you do?

- Pierre-Joseph. - Pleased to meet you.

He's come to work for you, as part of his apprenticeship.

Great.

Come on, then. We'll show you round the greenhouses.

My new employer was called Mr Aubry.

Adrien!

His nursery consisted of greenhouses and a seed shop.

I felt an instant sexual attraction.

That's better. You're getting the hang of it.

Kutta often had skin problems.

His skin was so delicate,

it struggled to adapt to the climate in Normandy.

I remember the doctor suggesting at the time

that I take him to see a psychologist.

The child flatly refused,

to the doctor's face,

reassuring me that he was fine,

looking at me as he did so,

repeating that everything was fine

and he wasn't at all worried.

Drawings appeared on his skin.

What is this yellow?

Piss and linseed oil.

I had left the cabin

and gone back with my cousin Sylvie

to sleep at her mother's house.

Sometimes she allowed me, lying to her mother,

to spend the night with Alberto.

Sylvie worked in a bookshop

where she regularly saw Françoise,

sometimes accompanied by her adoptive son.

That's how, every now and again, I heard news of Kutta.

"Rosier de Marienburg" "Rosier de Marienburg."

"Rosier Evêque."

"Rosier Cuspidé."

A beautiful plant.

You need a fork for that one. You need to...

You need to leave...

If you don't get enough of the root,

the dandelions grow back.

Guess what.

I've just come across some quillworts.

There are lots of them.

Listen, you've brought me luck.

I could cry.

I don't believe it.

People are going to go crazy.

I've managed to cultivate quillworts!

There's a huge clump here.

It's incredible.

This isn't even where I planted them.

There are more!

They're multiplying.

- It's incredible! - What's a quillwort?

It's this, these little rosettes.

I'm going to check the base for spores.

That's it.

If I've managed to cultivate quillworts...

I'm trying to see if there are any spores on the base of it.

How did you meet?

How did you meet?

At the beach in Varengeville.

A place of ill repute.

I met my previous ex there too.

I don't know what year it was.

He went to Jean Rostand college.

He's really into horticulture and all that.

But...

he turned out to be too narcissistic,

so there was nothing to build on.

You know what they say about narcissism.

Being narcissistic is the opposite of self-love.

It's a lack of self-esteem.

What about you?

You turn me on.

On Saturdays I went with Adrien

to Pavilly market to sell plants.

We left early enough to give us time to make love

before getting set up.

The list of places where we'd fucked was a long one.

The market stall opposite ours

belonged to a beekeeper called Moïse.

He was a sturdy man.

When you passed his stall,

the scent of honey and propolis conjured up the sunshine.

He was literally beaming,

at least for me, in a very erotic way.

A screening in my class of an ethnobotanical film

about shamans gathering medicinal plants in the Himalaya

had produced a certain emotion,

an enthusiasm amongst the students.

As for Pierre-Joseph, he remained silent.

Then, sometime later, one night after making love,

cradled in my arms,

I heard him murmur:

"Do you think I could go over there with you

"to see the plants on their home turf?"

"Yes. We'll make a film."

Adrien gave me five weeks off

to go with Alberto to film the Himalayan flora.

Alberto would film the flowers and I would draw them.

The film would be called "Memory of a Garden."

We were excited when we got there,

at an altitude of over 4,000 metres,

to find the flowers that we grow in our gardens,

such as Macleaya cordata and Meconopsis.

Alberto quoted Philippe Jaccottet.

"Familiar flowers, enough to forget the journey's end,

"when the walker finally understands

"that even though the path always leads back home,

"it also leads, ineluctably,

"as far away as possible from any house."

It was really quite beautiful.

That part was very beautiful.

- It was impressive. - Shall we put it in?

Yes, let's put it in.

How do I do this again?

One Sunday, after a session in the cabin, Adrien said:

"Alberto, you feel bored in town.

Move in with me and make your film.

"No one will bother you here

"and it will be more convenient for seeing Pierre-Joseph."

Like all good countryfolk,

his wife and children didn't object.

It was as natural to them

as taking a stray animal into the house.

We screened "Memory of a Garden" in the school courtyard.

In contrast with the noisy wonderment of his classmates,

Kutta's distress was palpable.

He understood that we'd touched on something

of his secret identity.

The landscapes were imprinted on him,

as were the voices of the shepherds we hiked with.

Kutta was a very handsome young man now.

He had decided to embark on a trip to India.

He didn't suggest we make the trip with him.

He wanted to go alone on the trail of his ancestors.

This child that I had always kept

at a distance from my heart,

I was suddenly missing him terribly.

I was scared of losing him.

He had found origins in a princely family.

That's when he severed ties, or almost,

retreating into his search for a new birth

which made him our social superior.

We didn't see one another for several months.

Kutta was imbued with something invisible

that he was dedicating himself to.

It gave him a certain haughtiness,

a combination of arrogance and contemplation.

After Odile died

Adrien retired and I quit my job.

I suggested to Moïse,

who was still looking for new sites for his apiaries,

that he place some hives in the woods.

He taught me the first principles of beekeeping.

I was fascinated.

His strength, gentleness, and love of bees

made this man a father figure to me.

Come, Ordet.

Come!

Where did you learn to draw?

I went to art classes in Yvetot.

I told them it was 50 years since...

since I'd last done any drawing and I hated it.

It's cold.

- Eh? - It's nice and cold.

It's nice and cold.

Right. Your turn. What are you going to draw?

His heart gave up.

His wife found him lying on the floor in his honey house

in Rue de l'Oiseau Bleu in Saint-Wandrille

where I had helped him extract honey.

Now that Moïse was dead,

I took care of his orphaned colonies.

I used to go to Saint-Wandrille, as if on a pilgrimage.

Pierre-Joseph had grown older.

He had become a gardener in his own right.

He had no difficulty finding clients

among the wealthy families

who had frequented Adrien's nursery.

One of them was Catherine Dubreuil,

the manageress of the Grand Hôtel in Varengeville.

Like lots of local people,

she was passionate about horticulture

and cultivated a secret walled garden

where she collected all sorts of climbing plants,

especially Akebia

which proliferated among the endemic creepers

commonly known in France as "battered wives' herb".

Pierre-Joseph soon befriended

this woman of the soil

to the point of calling her, as if to enhance her beauty,

"My client with Akebia quinata hair."

She exerted a sort of fascination over him

and over the course of his visits

she became his confidante.

Pierre-Joseph toyed with a bizarre idea.

He had a fantasy for a cabin.

His small house was too staid for his whimsical spirit.

He dreamed of a black house

above a sea of brambles and roses.

In this forest, like any enclosed space,

I felt a bit claustrophobic,

so I naturally set my sights on the far edge of the forest,

the side overlooking the pasture and the setting sun.

It was there, by tacit agreement,

that we began to clear "Le Roncier"

to make way, at the highest point,

for our "Black Maria".

Alberto, who knew a bit about architecture,

drew up a plan for the new cabin.

Five metres by six.

All made of wood, resting on stilts,

with a corrugated iron roof and weatherboard cladding.

The doors and windows would be salvage.

To finish, it would be painted with tar.

One day, Adrien told me

about a small ad in "L'Union Agricole"

for a gardening job at the Valmont estate.

"It's strange to finally meet after all this time."

"All what time?" asked Kutta.

He had passed by one day,

crossed the derelict estate,

and felt it was his mission to save it.

He had already rescued it from the Russian mafia

who had destroyed the park

by cutting down beeches that were hundreds of years old.

"In the darkest moments of my life

I thought of you," he said.

"I remember your arrival in France," I said.

We both had a strange feeling we knew one another.

"I like the silences between us," he said behind my back.

As for me, I was embarrassed by his youth and beauty.

"When are we going to make a film together?"

he suddenly asked me.

"My Renaissance château would make a good backdrop, no?"

The prince told me about his sleepless nights,

about how, stretched out on his bed,

he'd binge-watched all 73 episodes

of eight series of "Game of Thrones".

He confessed he was addicted to heroic fantasy

but also to amateur BDSM porn videos

and he was looking for a gardener to whip him.

I kept hearing the desperate barking of a dog

in the distance

which prevented me from taking any pleasure in our session.

The next morning I demanded an explanation.

He tied himself in knots,

telling me the dog had been abandoned

by the previous Mafia owners.

He maintained he couldn't set it free

for fear that it might run away.

I felt sick.

It's okay, dog. It's okay.