Mademoiselle Else

Mademoiselle Else is an adaptation in video of Fräulein Else a novel by Arthur Schnitzler It is the account in the first person of the last days of a young girl from a good family who on holiday in the Alps has to ask Dorsday an old art agent and bonvivant for money to help her father a Viennese lawyer ridden with debts Dorsday asks in exchange to be allowed to admire her nude Scenes shot in the Alps break up the story to allow Else to literally distance herself from the rest of the film shot in the studio a dark room that becomes the recipient of the various mental projections of the young girl These two different environments enable us to understand the comings and goings in the Else who weighs herself up and Else who weighs up the situation As it is indeed at Elses level around sexual benchmarks that Schnitzler develops his critique of liberalism