un chant damour be a remarkable short represent sordid and brutal and provocative while yet a poetic and lyrical a it title suggest . although not a rich and beguile a fassbinder querelle and and despite it claustrophobic lack of humour and the film lack the prolixity that often mar genet most famous literary work . indeed and there be no word in this film at all and or music and or any kind of sound . just complete silence . this be thematically vital represent set in a prison and with inmate in solitary cell and the film explore the idea of the voice who have the power to speak and and hence represent themselves and in our society . the film begin with the figure symbolic of this power in society authority in this case a police warden . robbed of a voice and he be reduce to the role of a voyeur and become our representative . the complicity between authority and criminality be a favourite genet theme . a the audience for this kind of film be predominantly middle class and it be the warden who see for u an underworld we would normally run a mile from . we see frustrated prisoner and try to communicate represent by pass flower through bar window while knock on wall while through special code while or and in the film most exquisite and arouse sequence and through a share smoking between a hole in the wall . the film be a melodrama and literalise what nicholas ray make figurative imprisonment and repression . the film and inevitably and honestly and end a it begin and with one crucial and perhaps hopeful and difference . some men get relief from this intolerable situation through masturbation and others by mad erotic breakdancing . there be scene which escape this hell into a kind of pastoral arcadia and where two men find happiness amidst sunny verdure . it be difficult to tell whether this sequence be a flashback and flashforward and or merely a dream ( the whole thing could be the warden fantasy ) and but it too eventually end in brutality and death . all this be show to u from the viewpoint of the warden . his gaze and though and be explicitly fetishised he be make complicit in what he see . this be literalise when his arousal become unbearable and and he begin whip a prisoner . the phrase climax of the movie begin to take on more than one meaning . the inmate themselves be subject to explicit fetishism be reduce to a series of torso and limb and hand and member . normally in cinema and this kind of spectacle be visit on beautiful woman for the delectation of the male viewer . here the male prisoner be treat to huge close ups and soft lighting and like the great hollywood starlet and a profoundly subversive gesture . year before cultural study and masculinity be systematically show to a performance and a process of become . the film be bookended with childlike cocteauesque credit on a blackboard and a if by lay squalor and sexuality so bare and unflinchingly and genet hope to return u to a kind of innocence and a new way of see .