Summary
A coruscating parable of possession etched in fire, The Branding Iron scorches the retina with its opening tableau: Pierre Landis, a man whose skull seems hammered from the same steel as the forge-born implement he wields, presses white-hot metal against the alabaster shoulder of Joan—his wife, his chattel, his unravelling obsession. The sizzle is almost audible through the flicker of 35 mm nitrate; the scar, a sigil of matrimonial tyranny, blooms like an infernal chrysanthemum. From this crucible of domestic sadism Joan is snatched by Prosper Gael, a playwright whose ink-stained fingers tremble with both rescue and larceny: he guns down the husband, spirits the trembling wife to a clifftop eyrie where salt wind scours guilt, and proceeds to transcribe her every sob into third-act dialogue. Yet the corpse is counterfeit; Pierre, stitched by shadows and vengeance, stalks the margins of Prosper’s torch-lit hideaway, waiting for the curtain of deception to rip. What unfurls is a hall-of-mirrors tragedy in which love itself is dramaturgy, identity is a role one rehearses until the soul forgets its original lines, and the branding iron—once cooled—becomes the nib of a pen that writes agony in scar tissue across the parchment of a woman’s life.
Synopsis
Pierre Landis is insanely jealous of his beautiful young wife Joan, and his jealousy makes him take a branding iron to her to mark her as his property. She is rescued by Prosper Gael, a playwright, who is forced to shoot Pierre. He takes Joan to his secluded retreat, and tells her that he has killed Pierre. What Joan doesn't know is that Prosper is secretly writing a play based on her life--and, furthermore, that Pierre isn't really dead.
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