En Aftenscene

Silken dusk drapes a Copenhagen drawing-room where marble cherubs smirk at human folly; a betrothed heiress, Oda Rostrup’s luminous Claire, flits between piano preludes and trembling secrets while her fiancé Valdemar Møller’s upright Axel extols bourgeois certainties. Into this perfumed hothouse drifts Robert Schmidt’s Reinhardt, a bohemian comet with paint-stained fingers and a smile like cracked varnish, bearing a portrait that bleeds candor onto the canvas: Claire’s visage unveiled, raw, yearning. The easel becomes a courtroom; glances turn to verdicts; a single crimson glove, dropped like a gauntlet, ignites a waltz of recrimination. Servants eavesdrop from behind velvet, candles gutter in synchrony with hearts, and the night’s score—half Chopin, half gasp—swells until a slammed door reverberates like a gunshot through frost-rim windows. By dawn, the engagement lies in porcelain shards, Reinhardt has fled with the unfinished canvas strapped to his back like a wound, and Claire—eyes bright with ruin—steps onto the balcony, inhaling the winter air as though it were absinthe, while the camera lingers on the vacant easel, its absence more eloquent than any confession.