The Yellow Lovers

AKA Les Amours Jaunes

Jean Rollin’s very first film, made when he was just 20 years old and it is, despite that, immediately obvious that this very much a Rollin film.

It was shot near the beaches of Dieppe, a stretch of coastline that Rollin would use in his films again and again, from Rape of the Vampire to Lips of Blood, though to Dracula’s Fiancée.

The film itself is a loose interpretation of Les Amours Jaunes (The Yellow Lovers), a collection of poems by Tristan Corbière from 1873 which focuses on loneliness and uses a series of apparently random Egon Schiele-like drawings intercut with the filmed beach footage to visually narrate the poem which is heard as a voiceover during the short film. An effect which helps convey the feeling of being between two worlds, a feeling attributed to Corbière which could just as easily be applied to Rollin himself.