Ondine

Where do you want to zoom? Explore the Laetitia's picture in the mirror above her right hand (on the left of the mirror).
You will progressively guess Hsiao Kang wearing the cap of the film director in the movie within the movie:

Laetitia Casta danced and sang in Chinese You're really beautiful 你真美麗 in the gardens of Tuileries
for the Tsai Ming-Liang's movie Face. Photo by William Laxton on November 13, 2008 PM.

Everything in this picture symbolizes the illusion of the cinema:

• In the mirror the roles are inverted: the frame of the Salome's picture has the head "cut"
  but the John the Baptist's head between two trees is still on his shoulders.
• In the mirrors one feels the fresh contrast like the Day and the Night
  between the dead leaves coming from Verviers and the artificial snow white as the Salome's gown.

The William Laxton's picture pays tribute to the movie poster of La nuit américaine [Day for Night]
where the film director with a star on the heart appears behind the camera.

At the end of this extract of Day for Night on a music by Georges Delerue, François Truffaut says: "Coupez" [Cut]!
Did he want to send Tsai Ming-Liang the subliminal message "Cut the St. John Baptist's head"?

Credit:

• the French actress Laetitia Casta as Salome and the Taiwanese actor Lee Kang-Sheng as Hsiao Kang,
• the film director Tsai Ming-Liang,
• the photographer William Laxton, Atom Cinema and Rezo Films,
• the journalist Joan Dupont who published The Louvre, Gardens to Boiler Room, Becomes a Filmmaker’s Set
  in the New York Times on December 26, 2008, with as last word of the first page: Truffaut.

Related topics:

• Face of the Bullfinch's reincarnation: another deep zoom composition with areas and links.