Summary
A pearl-walled garden, manicured to the point of suffocation, cages the titular Prunella beneath the joint custody of three matrons whose very names—Prim, Prude, Privacy—sound like a chant against carnal knowledge. Beyond the topiary lies only rumor; within, the days unfold like pressed flowers, scentless and preserved. Then a ribbon of tambourines and cracked applause flutters past the hedge, and in that instant the girl’s pulse syncopates with a drum she has never heard. Pierrot vaults the barrier, moon-powdered, eyes quicksilver; he kisses her as though the world ends at the back of her neck. By dawn she has traded propriety for footlights, fleeing with the troupe in a cart that smells of greasepaint and violated lilacs. Paris swallows them: gas-flares, proscenium arches, reviews that call her „a porcelain comet.“ Seasons pirouette; love calcifies into habit. Pierrot’s gaze drifts to newer constellations, and Prunella—adrift, luminous—abandons the stage, the city, the very syllables of her name. Years later, a chastened Pierrot buys the childhood cottage, now a mausoleum of echoes, and hosts one last revel for mummers and ghosts. Fireflies gutter; he wanders into the garden, hallucinates her silhouette among the phlox, and folds what he believes is a specter into his arms—only to feel the warm, indignant breath of the living woman. No moral, no neat apotheosis: just the possibility that love, like ivy, may die back yet cling to the wall it once adorned.
Synopsis
Carefully guarded by her three maiden aunts, Prim, Prude and Privacy, Prunella sees nothing of the world beyond her garden walls until a troupe of strolling players passes by. Peeping over the hedge, Prunella catches sight of the dashing Pierrot, and he, captivated by her beauty, leaps into the garden and makes love to her. That night, Prunella elopes with Pierrot, and soon she becomes a star of the Paris stage. Pierrot and his wife are happy for several years, but the fickle Pierrot finally deserts her for a new flame. Soon, however, he realizes the depth of his love for Prunella, and learning that she has left the stage, he returns to the garden to search for her and buys the little cottage from her only surviving aunt. At a party given for him by the mummers, Pierrot wanders distractedly into the garden, where he finds what he imagines is Prunella's ghost. Embracing her, he discovers to his joy that his Prunella is alive.
Review Excerpt
"
I. The Garden as Panopticon
Imagine a terrarium blown from blown glass: light enters, but sound is swallowed. That is the universe Housman and Granville-Barker conjure for Prunella’s first act. Cinematographer William J. Gross bathes each frond in mercury-light so that chlorophyll appears metallic, almost venomous. The aunts glide through this Eden like black-veiled Fates, snipping roses with the same dispassion one might sever a jugular. Their dialogue cards—white letters on charcoal stock—r..."
