On Easter Sunday, April 3, 1768, Marquis de Sade promised an écu to a beggar by the name of Rose Keller if she would follow him to Arcueil. Only a few hours later, after Keller managed to escape from the Marquis’ country house, this little ’adventure’ in the Paris suburbs would become the notorious 'Arcueil affair', a scandal that caught the public imagination in France and beyond. Different testimonies and rumours were spreading, conflicting interpretations were heard, but what really happened in the Marquis’ room? Where lies the truth about the scandal? Was Arcueil the scene of horrible sadistic sexual violence and some kind of perverse theatrical production, or was the victim not so innocent after all?
"Arcueil" is a complex, multi-perspective retelling of the Arcueil affair in which the Marquis de Sade was involved. It emphasises the doubts and ambivalences of any historical or – for that matter – media event.
This project has been funded with support from the Creative Europe Programme of the European Commission.
Aleksandar Bečanović, born in 1971, is a Montenegrin writer, film critic and screenwriter. He is the author of five poetry books, Ulysses’ Distance (1994), Being (1996), The Pantry (1998), Places in the Letter (2001) and Preludes and Fugues (2007); two short story collections, I am Waiting, What Will Happen Next (2005) and Obsession (2009); and a novel, Arcueil (2015). He has also published two books of film criticism, Genre in the Contemporary Cinema (2005) and the 900-page long Lexicon of Film Directors (2015).
He received the Risto Ratković Award for the best book of poetry in Montenegro in 2002. He writes film reviews and essays for Montenegrin daily Vijesti, and is one of the contributors to the books 501 Movie Directors (2007), 501 Movie Stars (2007), 101 Horror Movies You Must See Before You Die (2009) and 101 Sci-Fi Movies You Must See Before You Die (2009).
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