Let Me Explain

In a sun-drenched Riviera villa where the sea glints like shattered chandelier glass, newly-wed Jack—still tasting honeymoon champagne—tries to smuggle his bride past the sulfurous glare of Uncle Basil, a vitriolic misogynist who treats femininity as a moral contagion. Cornered, Jack recasts radiant Josephine as a domestic; the lie metastasizes when Basil, aroused by the servant’s carnal dusk in her eyes, demands her hand. A counterfeit husband is rented from the marina—an impetuous artist already shackled to a pathologically jealous wife—and the villa becomes a labyrinth of slammed doors, moonlit balconies, and silk slips furtively traded like contraband notes. Every kiss is a forgery, every vow a counterfeit coin; identities peel away in comic strips until the carnivalesque masquerade collapses under the weight of its own erotic algebra. When the final mask drops, the lovers stand naked—not in flesh but in culpability—while Basil’s vaunted hatred of women implodes into a howl of wounded male pride, leaving the marriage bed both sanctified and scorched.