Queen of Atlantis

Two young officers, Saint-Avit and Morhange, get lost in the desert and become prisoners of Antinéa, queen of the city of Atlantis. Saint-Avit, blinded by his love for her, obeys when she orders him to kill his comrade... L’Atlantide, as interpreted by Pabst, offers a psychoanalytic reading of Benoit’s novel, centering a dominant female figure who enslaves her lovers before destroying them. The film’s fantasy dimension is disturbing, and L’Atlantide bathes in a humid nightmare atmosphere, between the desperate search for a missing friend and the apparitions of an underworld lost in the desert. A long, discursive flashback suggests Antinéa’s Parisian origins, born from the marriage between Clémentine, a pretty, light-thighed French Cancan dancer, and an Arab prince seduced during a theatrical performance. Yet again, it remains impossible to know whether these memories are the ramblings of an old alcoholic or the strange truth.