Private Collections (1979) Plot Summary Explained

Release, runtime and language

1979 · 103 mins · French

Directed by

Walerian Borowczyk, Shūji Terayama

Starring

Jûzô Itami, Marpessa Dawn, Hiroshi Mikami, Takeshi Wakamatsu, Keiko Niitaka, Laura Gemser

Three vignettes intertwine. A lone sailor capsizes, washes ashore on a tropical island, and is discovered by a near‑naked, playful woman; he hides his distress signals and chooses to stay, uncertain of what lies ahead. An adolescent obsessively reconstructs a fragmentary nursery rhyme, drifting into dreamlike sexual awakening and Oedipal fantasies. In late‑19th‑century Paris, a wealthy man hires a prostitute who also performs in a cabaret; she leads him to her room, where he suspects robbery and wonders about her hidden motive.