Word: abelard
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...book's press notes, Andrea Barrett, whose National Book Award-winning collection of short stories Ship Fever is good enough that she should have known better, compares Old Scores to the famous story of the ill-fated lovers Abelard and Heloise. The parallel between the two stories is obvious--both are tales of ill-fated love affairs between teacher and student--but the comparison is specious. The passion between Abelard and Heloise has inspired great literature and art for eight centuries, but the passion between Beth Sieverdsen and Paul Ballard is just a rip-off of their love...
...After Maria is bitten by a dog and begins to act strange, the local bishop suspects demonic possession. Cayetano is sent as an exorcist, but after one look at the girl's blue eyes and cascading copper hair, all that gets exorcised is his own inhibition. A Latin American Abelard and Heloise? Not quite. Garcia tells a story of forbidden love, but he demonstrates once again the vigor of his own passion: the daring and irresistible coupling of history and imagination...
Penn thus becomes the latest school to turn itself inside out over an issue that dates back to Abelard and Heloise. Through the years so many professors have romanced and often married their students that it seems a quaint, even hypocritical exercise to suddenly try to stop them. "If this policy were applied retroactively," remarks Penn history professor Alan Kors, who married one of his students 20 years ago, "I think a third of the faculty would have resigned...
...libertine Frenchman, the repressed, masochistic Englishman, the randy medieval priest and the depraved Roman aristocrat are all present. Some of the anecdotes are almost too well-worn. The exploits of Casanova, for example, feature prominently, as does Lawrence of Arabia's fondness for being whipped. And the story of Abelard and Heloise is also included, since castration is one of the book's favorite topics...
...rest of the film involves a silly love story between La Mole and Margot, sometimes no more than an excuse for them to display their respective endowments and to pose prettily in profile. Needless to say, La Mole and Margot, like all good French lovers since Abelard and Heloise, are doomed and terrifically tragic. There are also poisonings, escape attempts, decapitations, incestuous rapes and boar hunts, all of which make "Queen Margot" a soap opera of historic order...