Three films, three intimate visions: when human relationships reveal our inner fractures

At first glance, The Peach Thief by Vulo Radev, Notes on a Summer by Diego Llorente, and I Have Already Died Three Times… by Maxence Vassilyevitch seem to belong to distant worlds. Although they differ in era, cultural context, and aesthetic, these films form a fascinating triptych the moment we approach them through the lens of intimacy. Together, they sketch out a complex weave of emotional tremors and psychological interlacing.

Love and desire, forbidden territories

In The Peach Thief, the love story between the wife of a Bulgarian officer and a Serbian prisoner unfolds in a wartime setting where any contact is forbidden. This clandestine relationship reveals a constant tension between duty and guilt at a time when escaping loneliness becomes, for both protagonists, almost a vital necessity. Desire can sometimes provide refuge—but it can just as easily represent a risk…

Notes on a Summer explores a subtler form of transgression: that of ambivalent feelings, unspoken truths, and impossible choices. The characters search for one another, observe one another, and sometimes even avoid one another. Nothing is explicit; everything is muted, and this emotional opacity is precisely what makes their bonds so charged. We never quite know whether we are witnessing a relationship blossoming or a story coming undone.

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In I Have Already Died Three Times…, relationships unfold within a climate of fragile identity. Connections appear as terrains of experimentation, friction, and rupture. Desire here is less romantic than vital, carrying the hopes and attempts of a protagonist seeking to redefine himself through others.

The next masterpiece? You’re the one who gets to decide! Head here to discover I Have Already Died Three Times… and give it a chance to shine!

Vulnerability at the heart of every relationship

One of the great common threads between these films lies in their ability to reveal human vulnerability without artifice. The Peach Thief exposes the emotional fragility of a woman trapped in a rigid world. Notes on a Summer explores hidden vulnerability, rooted in doubt. How, indeed, can we know what we truly want? And how can we say what we truly feel? In Vassilyevitch’s film, vulnerability becomes almost a permanent state; the characters seem constantly on the brink of crisis, revelation, or collapse.
These three worlds show how deeply affective relationships function as mirrors: they reflect our buried desires, our fears, and our limits. Every encounter, every gesture, even every silence brings a latent inner struggle to the surface.

Time, memory, and the mourning of what could have been

Another essential thread lies in the way these films handle time. In The Peach Thief, time is scarce and love appears stolen: it must be lived quickly, in the urgency of borrowed time. In Notes on a Summer, relationships form and unravel over the span of a single summer—a suspended interlude where everything seems possible, yet everything is also, by definition, fragile. I Have Already Died Three Times… probes the successive layers of existence: Who were we? Who are we still? Time shapes relationships as much as it destroys or reveals them.

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