Summary
A Flemish flower-vendor’s corolla of innocence is plucked petal by petal beneath the charcoal-stained fingers of Victor Fleming, a Paris-haunted painter who treats souls like still-life studies. Beebe, whose baskets once exhaled dawn-drenched dew, becomes the reluctant muse of a man who signature-scrawls hearts the way forgers counterfeit banknotes. While sun-baked Jeanot—calloused, steady as a Carthusian bell—offers her a horizon of wheat sheaves and constancy, Fleming dangles the vertiginous glow of Montmartre nights, absinthe lanterns, and canvas immortality. Lady Magda—silk-cloaked, desperation tucked behind a fan—pleads for the return of a love she never truly possessed, warning Beebe that the painter devours affection like turpentine devours pigment. Yet Beebe, half-sphinx, half-sparrow, follows the scent of turpentine across borders, only to stumble into a cacophonous atelier where bacchanal shadows lick the walls and her icon of genius collapses into a syphilitic satyr. She flees, dress hem sodden with champagne and candle-smoke, back to the bruised arms of Jeanot and the lowing cattle of Brabant, trading oil-tinted dreams for earthy furrows and a dawn that smells of bread, not benzene.
Synopsis
Beebe, a Belgian peasant girl of rare beauty, sells flowers in the marketplace where she meets unscrupulous artist Victor Fleming. Fleming eventually succeeds in making the innocent girl love him, much to the sorrow of Jeanot, a farm boy who loves the girl. Fleming has a sweetheart, however, Lady Magda, who begs Beebe not to take Fleming from her. The artist rejects Lady Magda but leaves Beebe behind when he returns to Paris. Beebe pines for her artist lover, and later, hearing that Fleming is ill, she goes to him. Arriving at his studio in the middle of a wild orgy, Beebe's illusions are shattered. She returns home to her village and accepts the simple love of Jeanot.
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