Dorian Gray im Spiegel der Boulevardpresse

“I’d like to finish dictating the story” – declarations of independence need an audience and its undivided attention. With suitable emphasis, the rich, narcissistic dandy Dorian Gray (Veruschka von Lehndorff) thus directs his self-empowering words into the camera. They are the famous last words at the end of a fantastical, ironic, opera-like reflection on power, identity, feelings and media manipulation, the end point of a breathtaking romp through different cultures and worlds via lunar landscapes and through the Berlin underground. It’s ultimately Dr. Mabuse (Delphine Seyrig) who gets the true final word though, the boss of a press empire that spans the world who has created a fictitious character in the form of the androgenous Dorian Gray that has now become entirely independent of her. (mg)