The Garden of Delights

Synopsis

Part medieval bestiary, part ecological science fiction and part contemporary western, The Garden of Delights is a retro-futuristic epic that takes us on a journey into the worlds to come. Philippe Quesne was freely inspired by The Garden of Earthly Delights, the famous triptych by Hieronymous Bosch, known for its fantastic allegories and other chimerical figures that sail between hell and paradise.

Like the 15th century painter, Philippe Quesne’s cast and crew explore, with melancholy curiosity, the hopes and uncertainties of an era in transition. Vivarium Studio’s fables explore worlds on the edge of our own, where all forms of heroism have given way to light-hearted fantasy and patient utopias. The relationship between nature and culture is blurring, and each of us ventures to formulate playful responses to the threats we face.

Writer’s note

The Garden of Delights is the multifaceted and colourful tale of a group of humans gathered in a place visibly removed from the world, who set out to realise, in a practical and cinematic sense, their utopia: a free life, without separation, without distinction, in which beings and species live together in harmony. As at the end of the Middle Ages, the fable is in a period of transition, in the midst of a metamorphosis of its narratives and powers.

They could not distinguish between the real and the artificial, which constituted their temporary paradises. The fabulous rubs shoulders with the concrete, the imaginary with practical use. You have to dig in the ground to find water, which becomes the Source of Life, for example. Natural and man-made elements are both protective and protected.

The plot follows several interwoven narrative threads: it could be the collective search for a different, supportive and peaceful way of life, with its rituals and its buccaneers in the service of the cause, and perhaps its pitfalls; it could be the making of a film in the style of Fellini’s Intervista, between shots of scenes filmed in other natural spaces and in situ recreations on a green background – to the extent that the distinction between those who act and make the film and the inhabitants of this place is not evident; and the ever-present, if diffuse, threat of catastrophe caused by a sudden change in climate or the destruction of this living space by hunters or bulldozers – could this be the name of a new housing development to be built?

Phillipe Quesne