Word: desertion
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...draw, measure and document the cultural landmarks of the Egyptian dunes. Of course, the military party with whom he travels are little concerned with monuments or cave-drawings. They have been yanked from their homes and families to conduct a miserable campaign against the Mameluke Dynasty, marching around the desert with their camels and cannons, blowing the face off an ancient sphinx when there's nothing else to do. (And you thought modern-day French were rude...
...finished his drawings, and he and Augustin lag a bit behind. Inevitably, the two are separated from their unit, whom Augustin decides to hunt down so that he and Jean-Michel may be reabsorbed. "I'll come for you," he assures the artist, who squats beneath a desert sage mixing his canisters of paint...
Anyone who saw The English Patient knows that return trips aren't always easy in the desert, and Augustin soon discovers that he has no more idea how to return to Jean-Michel then he does how to find the lost regiment. His heat-stroked, knock-kneed peregrinations around the desert land him into new trouble, especially when he steals water from a Bedouin maiden. The resultant man-hunt sends Augustin hiding in a deep crevasse in a large, barren plateau, but no sooner has he escaped their swords than he runs into a whole new set of daggers, this...
...cavalier is well beyond what I can describe without inciting unintentional giggles. Unfortunately, Currier has the same problem, though her deadpan close-ups and unrelieved seriousness work hard to wipe those smirks off our faces. In fairness, much of what happens in this central chapter of Passion in the Desert is tense and engaging, Augustin must fight the leopard for water, food and freedom to move, all of which the leopard jealously guards, though it otherwise remains far more docile and generous than Augustin has any reason to expect. When the soldier discovers a gigantic facade of columns and stairs...
Balzac wrote A Passion in the Desert in an era where Rousseau and other philosophers spent gallons of ink wrestling with the essence of man, the core identity that, depending on one's persuasion, either differentiated him from or linked him ineluctably with the animal kingdom. Augustin, well-played for most of the picture by the leonine Daniels, seems intrigued by these same questions, even overwhelmed by them. Having eventually lost hope of any rediscovery, he gives himself over entirely to the cat's way of life: lapping water, shedding his clothes etc. Dementia and self-abandonment are, however, notorious...