Few Personal Messages

“In movies by Buñuel, Visconti, Bertolucci, and Pasolini Pierre Clémenti was ravishing a louche angel and devil, unreachable, unknowable, beautiful. In A Few Personal Messages, Clémenti claims your head and heart when he writes: ‘You think if you lock up your nightmares, you'll feel better.’ Imprisoned in Italy, his cri de coeur resonates with Oscar Wilde’s De Profundis, both men inside for their ‘sins.’ Inside, Clémenti is ravaged and assaulted by the jail's daily inhumanities and barbarisms. ‘In a society built on repression,’ he says, ‘who is innocent?’ Here, Pierre Clémenti must be a modern-day secular saint, whose manifesto is profound, unforgettable, and like, beautiful.”—Lynne Tillman