Uncovering the Secret Lives of Erotica Writers

In this age of Derrida and deconstruction, we learn to isolate text from author, to consider each work of literature as a discrete, changeable creature that lives and breathes in its readers' interpretations rather than in its creator's intentions. But writers are humans, and their work is directly influenced by their own unique experiences, or as French author Dominique Aury noted, "It's not possible to disguise one's self when writing."

Aury should know; after 40 years of disguising herself under the pseudonym "Pauline Reage," she finally revealed herself as the author of Histoire d'O (Story of O) in 1994. In her new film, Writer of O, filmmaker Pola Rapaport examines the woman behind this seminal work of erotic literary fiction. Half documentary and half cinematic adaptation, the film alternates between real-life footage of Aury and scenes dramatized from her life and from the novel itself.

Though Writer of O begins with Rapaport's voice-over narrating her own experience as a scandalized, and titillated, young reader, the filmmaker's presence soon melts away and cedes the focus of the story to Aury herself. Through talking-head interviews with publishers and journalists who knew her (she died in 1998), we get a picture of Aury as the outside world saw her-a quiet, unassuming editor at the prestigious Gallimard publishing house, who dressed in muted earth tones and lived with her parents. But conversations with the 86-year-old Aury reveal a woman who felt deeply and never quenched her unorthodox opinions on life and love, though she wouldn't reveal those thoughts until late in her life.

Histoire d'O is so detailed in its brutal descriptions of a young woman's sadomasochistic relationships that, in 1954, no one believed a woman had written it. Even after Aury's confession, people still question how she could have penned such a book. But by interweaving the facts of the author's life with the fiction she created, Rapaport implies a distinct correlation between Aury and her protagonist, O. Even the actresses who play Aury and O in the dramatized scenes (Catherine Mouchet and Penelope Puymirat, respectively) are hardly differentiable except by context. Though one is buttoned-up in moss-colored tweed and the other naked except for iron chains and scarlet-stained lips, the two dark-haired women merge in the mind of the viewer, each possessing the same delicately Gallic features, slender frame, and wistful, reflective expression.

Though Aury does not explicitly divulge how much she wrote from experience, she says, in response to those incredulous that the novel could be anything like its demure author, "How could they know if it is or not?" Aury was always a private person, suppressing her own literary achievements to protect the reputation of her family and workplace, yet Rapaport sensitively reveals just enough of the truth to peak our interest and give Aury her due. Now that "time [has taken] the sting out of scandal," we can appreciate Aury for her artistic merit and quiet bravery. Still, the legendary intrigue of Pauline Reage lives on, since it will never be known for sure just how much of the Histoire d'O is Aury's story as well.