Inspired by a wonderfully obscure 1952 essay translated from Dutch and entitled The Phenomenology of the Encounter by F. J.J. Buytendijk, this short film is set atop Notre-Dame de Paris. Overlooking the city from the bell towers, a couple is getting acquainted over tea in the middle of winter and its phenomenologically cold!

The intimate and the monumental are face to face in this most curious dance where the images reveal the vulnerability of a couple surrounded by diabolically erotic gargoyles and the vastness of the great cathedral roof. One ponders the act of self-portraiture and a wish to immortalize a rendezvous overlooking the city of love. The dialogue between the cine-camera and the stills camera, echoes the playful staging of two young lovers having fun in Paris. If we sometimes feel dwarfed by the great monuments of history, we are at the very least, a “significant other”, for that other, the lover.