Arquivo

Sokúrov found an existential argument in the novel “Madame Bovary”, by Flaubert and made of this the line of narrative in this feature. Here Emma Bovary speaks French to all of her Russian lovers and becomes a woman totally estranged to the environment she lives in. The Russian film maker creates metaphors that are absolutely cinematographic and tragic, in this case adopting as a key-word, “duty”, a term dear to him and that is to take on different meanings in his masterpiece. In Sokúrov films, all of the characters have a duty they must answer to in their lifetime. Erotic duty weighs on poor Emma (as seen by Sokúrov), that will render her a kind of lost, solitary demon. “Save and Protect is a philosophical drama where amorous suffering is seen as a manifestation of a catastrophic nature of human existence. Man is but a blind being, wandering to and fro from birth to death”, says Sokúrov.