You Burn Me

Tú me abrasas is an adaptation of “Sea Foam”, a chapter from Cesare Pavese’s “Dialoghi con Leucò” published in 1947. The ancient Greek poet Sappho and the nymph Britomartis meet beside the sea and have a conversation about love and death. Sappho is said to have thrown herself into the ocean from lovesickness. Britomartis apparently tumbled off a cliff and into the water while fleeing from a man. Together, the two discuss the stories and images that have emerged around them to try and understand, at least for a moment, the bittersweet nature of desire. The film adapts not only the text but also footnotes and gaps in the story. For example, the fact that, in 1950, a desperate Pavese committed suicide in a hotel room with this book by his side. Or that Sappho’s poems have survived only in fragments. Or that sea foam is historically and scientifically associated with fertility and bacteria, that is, with life itself. “Everything dies in the sea and comes back to life,” says Britomartis. Tú me abrasas introduces new readings and translations that go beyond the myths by Pavese and Sappho.