Jean Genet's "Un chant d'amour": concrete poetry of nostaliga and pleasure

“Un chant d’Amour” or “A Song of Love” is Jean Genet’s only cinematic work, both written and directed by him in 1950. This twenty five minute long silent film, as the only exhibited work by Genet in the realm of the visual, provides us with a key into reading his literary works. However, besides a book by Jane Giles on Genet’s cinema i.e. “Un Chant d’Amour”, there are no more than a few pages in numerous books, sentences, paragraphs, allusions and quick references in essays most of which referencing some of the film’s iconic scenes as a “visual counterpart” to what is being described in words. ❧ This paper is intended to give an analytical yet subjective reading of the spatial and temporal experience of the film through its erotics. With regards to the title of the film, “A Song of Love” or “A Love Song”, the essay also attempts to locate this underground film from the 1950’s in relationship to our contemporary notions of a “love song” to somehow historicize this reading.