and draws a comparison between Hanna, a woman open to the light, and Isabelle who is opaque. However, Jerzy does persuade Isabelle to be one of the naked models. Delacroix In these tableaux, which recreate the Entry of the Crusaders in Constantinople and Jacob wrestling with the Angel, there is a high degree of movement. Knights on horseback circle restlessly around the set of the Greek city, while Jerzy himself becomes part of the scene when he begins a wrestling match with the actor playing the Angel. El Greco Set to Fauré’s Requiem, the tableau of the Assumption of the Virgin has parallel scenes in the motel involving Jerzy and Isabelle, who admits she is still a virgin. Watteau The Embarkation for Cythera is only shown in disjointed fragments, after it becomes evident that the film is never going to be completed, and the camera stays far away, giving a dispassionate documentary air to the empty ship and isolated couples. Significantly, it is the only tableau in the open air exploiting natural light. Themes Art and Life In several ways, the film looks back to Godard's 1963 film Contempt, about the tensions among a multinational team on location making a film that will never be completed. That film also had Michel Piccoli as one of the male leads and was shot by Raoul Coutard. It too oscillated between the demands of art, in that case a debased commercial version of an immortal work, and of life. In Passion, the contrast between the two is clear. The world of the tableaux vivants is that of high art, of rich colours and forms embodied in costumes and props of beauty and accompanied by a soundtrack of masterpieces. That of people outside, both those making the film and those at the motel and the factory, is one where, though they may have ideals, they cannot escape everyday issues of survival, particularly sex and money. It is a world that is grey, wintry and often dull. The artistic interludes in the film have no dialogue, just as the paintings they represent speak silently to viewers by means of form and colour. But the life of the film makers and townspeople suffers from lack of communication, with often incoherent conversations that are sometimes in different unsubtitled languages. One character has a stutter, another a hacking cough, one is mute, and the producer tries to talk