Word: elda
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THIS naturalism is tinged with mysticism, largely because of the reserved, intriguing air Christine Boisson gives to her part as Elda, the forest-woman and the 'sorceress' of the movie's title. She functions as the conscience of the village, somehow above the women she treats so lovingly. She has almost too much consciousness for an illiterate woman of the forest in 13th century France...
...scene of the movie, the monk starts quizzing Elda about her belief in God, looking for a chink in the impenetrable facade she presents to him. She responds by demanding that he teach her to write; when he asks her what she would write about, she declares with dreamlike intensity that she would write about leaves and plants and flowers and all their wondrous healing qualities. As her eyes stare into the distance, presumably lost in contemplation at the amazing power of the written word, the viewer cannot help but be somewhat skeptical...
...powerful nobleman. After refusing to skin a deer that his father has just shot down, the monk runs away, ashamed at his cowardice, and rapes a young girl he comes upon. This act of degradation permeates his mind, but it is only through the experience of interacting with Elda the forest-woman that the monk directly confronts his past...
...final confrontation with Elda, the monk is jolted into understanding and acceptance of her different ways. The story she tells is all too familiar and jarring to him, secure in his family position, in his Church, as a man. Raped by the local nobleman on what was to have been her wedding night, Elda became pregnant and was sent by her mother to live in the forest with an old woman who gathered herbs and acted as the local healer...
...Elda, and the generations of European women she represents, created a powerful personal creed. She was an avid healer, a caring, soothing presence in the face of poverty and a demeaning social position. And it is her experience--the experience of the nurturing, intelligent and misunderstood woman--which Sorceress chronicles eloquently...