I was attracted to this film recently after discovering dialogue regarding schizophrenics, I thought was a bit prejudiced. Having been diagnosed with schizophrenia I never believed I had, I set out to discover the nature of my diagnoses. Since that time I have uncovered numerous films and books at the root of most of my problems and nothing innately wrong with me, in fact I never had a chance to even develop a normal personality that wasn’t contaminated with films mostly due to hypnotic suggestions employed by numerous film makers in the 1940’s and 1950’s. I recently discovered this film as being part of the cause for my diagnoses in 1991.
This was a skillfully created film and as skillfully acted. The characters were not quite as convincing as in other films like Girl Interrupted but they were keenly portrayed with a focus on the transactions between the patients and Vincent. Vincent does seem the focus of the film rather than Lilith. The film claims to be about a mentally ill woman named Lilith who is schizophrenic. She is portrayed as gifted and highly intelligent but frequently drifts into these periods of delusion as if she is living in another place and time, the players showing up from time to time. Vincent does appear as her inept caretaker. Lilith seems to have a fixation on water I interpreted as part of her birth peri-natal matrix and the source of her happiness. Numerous scenes of a waterfall and rushing water are symbolic of the beginnings of birth. She’s an adult still possessed of infantile qualities. I interpreted the scene in which Stephen nearly falls into the raging water, as Lilith innocently but recklessly wanting Stephen to experience what she was feeling within herself, being free from the dark depressing confines of the womb.
The three, Lilith, Vincent and Stephen form a triangle as does Vincent and the two psychiatrists. As the story progresses he seems to fall in love with Lilith knowing Stephen has feelings for her too, discrediting Stephen as a viable suitor for her. I see Vincent as a victim of Stephen’s transferences and his affections for Lilith which Vincent acts out with Lilith and Lilith confuses with her brother. He becomes so entangled with Lilith, blaming her condition rather than his incapacity to manage the emotional states of both Stephen and Lilith, he is unable to separate Stephen’s feelings from his own. Vincent crosses the line and becomes sexually involved with Lilith. She seems to possess a sexual freedom difficult for Vincent to understand and he finds himself in another triangle, a sexual one, now wanting to isolate Lilith from Stephen and Yvonne, taking her on various outings alone. At a point in the film her behavior leads one to think she is a pedophile as her behavior is clearly inappropriate. Lilith is being abused and so I would surmise they have re-enacted something of Lilith’s past? Thinking he is falling deeper in love with Lilith he returns a gift Stephen made and gave to Lilith, a box for her pastels. Stephen, unable to bare what he thinks is a rejection, kills himself. This sends Vincent fleeing to Lilith for comfort she is unable to give and she too becomes distraught and falls into a depressed state. At the end of the film we see Vincent heading towards Lilith’s room and there he finds it destroyed by her rage. Lilith has regressed to a more primitive state of existence and is in isolation, likely where part of her life began after birth, an incubator.
At a point in the film I began to see Vincent as the patient and clearly the mentally ill person, Lilith having been his caretaker. It is hard to tell until the end of the film he is the real patient but everything seemed to be going in reverse, as in the film Suspect.
