"In the poses of the dandy and the manufactured excesses of the tabloid press, Ottinger finds connections between our 'fin de siecle' moment and the last one, as well as a way to explore her own obsession with the artifice inherent in cinema and gender presentation. Her ingenious reworking of the Dorian Gray story features the late Delphine Seyrig as Dr. Mabuse, the chief executive of a multinational media organization whose machinations are worthy of her namesake, the sinister doctor of German expressionist film. Her unscrupulous plan to increase circulation—"We will create personalities, sensations, scandals and catastrophes of our own"—provides an perfect framework for Ottinger's rich tableaux and episodic narrative structure. Dorian Gray—young, rich, handsome and narcissistic—is the tool: 'We will build him up, seduce him and destroy him!' Played in drag by 60's supermodel Veruschka von Lehndorff, this Dorian's initiation takes place on a indelible nighttime tour of the Berlin underworld. In a fantastically staged opera within the film, Seyrig appears as a Spanish Inquisitor and Dorian confronts his mirror image and his great love. Will Dorian Gray become Dr. Mabuse's victim or her best pupil? This epic of queer cinema is a fitting tribute to Oscar Wilde and an uncanny evocation of our current preoccupation with celebrity and the transgressive possibilities of gender performativity." — Patricia White, Swarthmore College