Cynara: Poetry in Motion (1996)
Two beautiful women, a Sculptress & a Poetess, 1880s Baycliff, an isolated English village on the Irish Sea, ride horses, play chess, recite poetry & Make Love.
Two lonely Victorian artists meet on a windswept beach, swap poetry for foreplay, and discover that the muse looks considerably better without her corset.
In 1883, the unhappily displaced writer Byron arrives from Paris seeking peace in Baycliff, an isolated English village on the Irish Sea. There she meets Cynara, a solitary sculptor who finds provincial respectability every bit as suffocating as Byron finds her own troubled past. Their courtship unfolds through beachside encounters, horse rides, chess games, intimate conversation and the increasingly obvious pleasure of being watched by another woman. Byron’s presence awakens Cynara’s desire to sculpt the female body, while Cynara becomes the flesh-and-blood muse behind Byron’s erotic poetry. Yet Nicole Conn is less interested in ordinary conversation or social detail than in the fever inside their heads. Both women begin imagining the physical affair they are still too cautious to consummate, with Cynara’s fantasies presented...
in black and white and Byron’s in colour. Brief touches, loaded glances and artistic collaboration gradually erode the barriers between them until restraint becomes almost comically impossible. The film is thin on plot and unapologetically overcooked, but that is largely the point: Conn was aiming for something lush, romantic and excessive rather than restrained realism. The cheap video finish, solemn verse and staged love scenes sometimes make the production resemble a particularly horny historical soap opera, yet its sincerity is hard to sneer at completely. Beneath the gauze and grand gestures is a sweet idea—that being truly seen can release an artist, a lover and a woman from the same emotional prison.
The setting is late-Victorian England, when two respectable women could share a drawing room, a horse ride or an artistic friendship without anyone publicly acknowledging the erotic voltage humming underneath. Baycliff is presented as a remote, misty community where convention presses in from one side and the sea offers escape on the other. Although playing the Irish Sea coast, the film was photographed against a rugged northwestern shoreline, using beaches, rocky water, open countryside, horses and a secluded house to create its pocket-sized lesbian Wuthering Heights atmosphere. Do not expect immaculate heritage-film polish: the picture has the soft, flat texture of low-budget 1990s video. Even so, the coastal scenery and dreamy fantasy passages give it an appealing handmade sensuality. The vibe is sleepy, earnest and unabashedly sapphic—part costume romance, part illustrated erotic poem, and part soft-focus fantasy made for women rather than the usual leering male gaze.
Johanna Nemeth’s Cynara has the stronger brooding presence, playing the sculptor as a woman whose hands understand desire before her tongue dares admit it. Melissa Hellman’s Byron brings a lighter, more provocative energy, teasing Cynara out of her shell while posing as both poet and willing inspiration. Neither performance is subtle, but subtlety would look rather lonely in a film where every stare practically removes a petticoat. Both actresses are attractive, feminine and comfortable with the production’s extended nudity and simulated lesbian lovemaking. The sex is firmly softcore but fairly explicit for a romantic short, with naked bodies, rubbing, entwined limbs and some decidedly enthusiastic positions. It occasionally lands closer to awkward choreography than convincing ecstasy, but its female-centred tenderness and wholehearted lack of shame give the film its peculiar, endearing allure.
This Beautiful, Aesthetic Arthouse Film made by Nicole Conn is exactly what the title suggest, A Poetry in Motion.
1883, Baycliff, an isolated English village on the Irish Sea. Two women’s friendship becomes passion. Cynara, a sculptor, alone, befriends Byron, a poet, who’s left Paris in unhappiness and is visiting. They ride horses on the beach, talk, play chess, and make tender love against a background of candle lights and poetry. Byron inspires Cynara as she sculpts, Cynara becomes Byron’s muse as she writes.
A Visual & Auditory Treat for the Senses!!
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