A Brief Story of Princess X

Eccentric and haughty, Princess Marie Bonaparte (1882-1962), Napoleon’s great-granddaughter, was a writer, psychoanalyst and pioneer of sexual freedom. In 1905, Sigmund Freud, of whom Marie was a pupil and whose work she translated into French, claimed that female orgasm was derived from penetration. Marie wasn’t at all persuaded by such statements; disappointed by her own personal experience, she theorized that it depended on the distance between clitoris and vagina. Firmly convinced of her theory, the princess underwent surgical operations in order to achieve satisfaction. The story is told and kept in the history of the execution of the work Princess X (1916) by Constantin Brancusi. The well-known sculptor, after having devoted five years to the portrait of his client Marie, destroyed the work Woman Looking in a Mirror (1909), transforming it into an egg-shaped head, slightly tilted, the long neck ending in a full bust, with an ambiguous meaning: a sinuous phallic shape in reflecting bronze. But was this change due to the sculptor’s subtle irony? or a misunderstanding between him and the Princess? Gabriel Abrantes’ provocative and stinging film take on the story of Princess X by faithfully following actual events.