Burning Secret

A boy recovering at a sanatorium in the mountains becomes close friends with a baron much older than himself. But the baron is using the boy only to get near his mother, the wife of an elderly diplomat. When the boy understands the man’s intention he is seized by jealousy, turns sullen and withdraws. The film shows this not as a love triangle but as a child being made into an instrument. The account holds its events to the limit of the boy’s knowledge, so the viewer understands as late as he does. It takes place in Austria in the nineteen twenties, and the closed order of the sanatorium makes everything more visible. The mother is left with her own choices and is not drawn in a single direction. Faye Dunaway and Klaus Maria Brandauer appear in Andrew Birkin’s hundred and six minute film, completed in 1988.