An older
Paul Verlaine meets
Arthur Rimbaud's sister Isabelle in a café in Paris. Isabelle and her mother want Verlaine to hand over any copies he may still have of Rimbaud's poems so they can burn them. Verlaine reflects on the relationship he formed with Rimbaud, beginning when the teenaged Rimbaud had sent his poetry to Verlaine from his home in the provinces in 1871. Verlaine impulsively invited him to his rich father-in-law's home in Paris, where he lives with his young, pregnant wife. Rimbaud displays no sense of manners or decency, scandalising Verlaine's pretentious,
bourgeois in-laws. The 27-year-old Verlaine is seduced by the 16-year-old Rimbaud's physical body, as well as by the originality of his mind. The staid respectability of married life and easy, middle-class surroundings had been stifling Verlaine's admittedly
sybaritic literary talent. Rimbaud acts as
sadistically to Verlaine as does Verlaine to his young wife, whom he eventually deserts. A violent, itinerant relationship ensues between the two poets, the climax of which arrives in
Brussels when a drunken and enraged Verlaine shoots Rimbaud and is sentenced to a fine and two years in prison for
sodomy and grievous bodily harm. In prison, Verlaine converts to Christianity, to his former lover's disgust. After release, he meets Rimbaud in Germany, vainly and mistakenly seeking to revive the relationship. The two men part, never to meet again. Bitterly renouncing literature in any form, Rimbaud travels the world alone, finally settling in
Abyssinia (modern day Ethiopia) to run a "trading post". There, he has a mistress. A tumour in his right knee forces him back to France, where his leg is amputated. Nevertheless, the cancer spreads and he dies at age 37. When he dies, the image of one of his most famous poems,
Le Dormeur du val, appears. During her conversation with Verlaine, Isabelle Rimbaud asserts her brother had accepted confession from a priest soon before he died, showing Christian penitence, which is why only the censored versions of his poetry should survive. Verlaine pretends to agree but tears up her card after she leaves. Verlaine, drinking
absinthe (to which he has become addicted), sees a vision of the sixteen-year-old Rimbaud. The vision includes a young Rimbaud walking alone on a mountain range, Verlaine proclaiming they were both happy together, and Rimbaud claiming to have finally found eternity. ==Cast==