The Flesh of the Orchid movie storyline. Claire is locked up in an isolated building in the grounds of a psychiatric hospital, where the gardener comes in regularly to rape her. Obtaining a knife, she stabs his eyes out and flees. Getting a lift in a lorry, it crashes when the driver has his eyes stabbed out; Emerging from the wreckage, she is rescued by Louis who, with an unstable colleague Marcucci, is on his way to a business meeting in a hotel. While Louis is in the meeting, Marcucci tries to rape Claire and gets his eyes stabbed out. Claire flees and Marcucci, unable to defend himself, is then knifed to death by contract killers, the Berekian brothers.
Louis rescues Claire and takes her back to his isolated house, where they spend the night making love. However the Berekians are waiting outside and, when the couple emerge, get a knife into Louis. Claire rescues him, leaving him in a safe place while she goes in search of a doctor. She is recognised by a nurse from the psychiatric hospital, who alerts her aunt who placed her there. In fact she is the heiress to a business empire, which her aunt controls so long as Claire is mentally unfit. Locked up by the nurse, Claire is found by the Berekians, who abduct her as a bargaining counter. The aunt finds the wounded Louis, who she locks up as a bargaining counter.
The Berekians lock Claire up in the care of Lady, a colleague from the days when all three were circus performers. Feeling sorry for the girl, Lady tells her that she is the result of her dead mother’s affair with a circus artiste and lets her escape; As she waits for a train, she is told by an older woman that she is recognisably insane. She goes to her aunt’s house, where Louis is a prisoner, and reunites with him. The accountant of the family firm tells her it is going downhill through the aunt’s mismanagement and that, as the rightful owner, she should take charge.
The Flesh of the Orchid (La Chair de l’Orchidée) is a 1975 film by Patrice Chéreau as his directorial debut, adapted by him and by Jean-Claude Carrière from the 1948 book The Flesh of the Orchid by British writer James Hadley Chase, “a pulp-novel sequel to No Orchids for Miss Blandish” (1939). The film stars Charlotte Rampling, Simone Signoret, Bruno Cremer, Edwige Feuillère and, in a cameo, Alida Valli.
The Flesh of the Orchid (1975)
La Chair de l’Orchidée
Directed by: Patrice Chéreau
Starring: Charlotte Rampling, Bruno Cremer, Edwige Feuillère, Simone Signoret, Alida Valli, Hans Christian Blech, François Simon, Rémy Germain, Marie-Louise Ebeli, Ève Francis, Jenny Clève
Screenplay by: Jean-Claude Carrière, Patrice Chéreau
Production Design by: Richard Peduzzi
Cinematography by: Pierre Lhomme
Film Editing by: Pierre Gillette
Costume Design by: Jacques Schmidt
Art Direction by: Yves Bernard, Danka Semenovicz
Music by: Fiorenzo Carpi
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: 20th Century Fox
Release Date: January 29, 1975
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