“Passion in the Desert,” which opens today, is about a guy who
does just that. He’s a soldier in the French army, storming through
Egypt in 1798. He can’t find his regiment. He can’t find water. All
he can find are scorpions, rattlesnakes and a bad time. As presented
here, getting stranded in the desert has to be the loneliest thing
imaginable.

The film, based on a novella by Honore de Balzac, begins with the
soldier (Ben Daniels) escorting an eccentric French artist through
the desert. Michel Piccoli, in a relatively small role, makes a vivid
impression as the artist, who goes through life at a cold remove.
Minutes after a battle between Egyptian and French armies he appears
on the field painting the carnage, using the fresh blood as paint.

BY HORSE AND BY FOOT

Obviously, the artist isn’t much company, but things get worse for
the soldier after they separate. First he’s alone, riding through the
desert on his horse. Next he’s on foot, thinking about all the fun
times he had before his horse died. He climbs up and down sand dunes,
looking way overdressed in his blue infantry uniform.

Download movie Avatar

The leopard enters the picture like a breath of hot air. The
soldier, chased by angry Egyptians into a mountain cave, suddenly
sees two
eyes glowing in his direction. “Passion in the Desert” is at its
best in the scenes in which the leopard and the man are testing each
other.

The leopard, a female, is a magnificent creature, looking not
unlike a short-haired domestic cat, only bigger, and with none of a
house cat’s insecurity over its inability to open cans of food. The
leopard opens necks. In one scene, she goes to work on a man’s head
as if munching celery.

LAND OF PARABLE

The leopard becomes a valuable friend — she knows the best food,
where to find it, how to catch it, where to eat it. Once the leopard
decides that the soldier is OK, he has it made, but that’s just where
the movie starts to go: We leave the land of interesting and enter
the land of parable.

The soldier and the leopard are two lonely creatures who come
together to the benefit of both. The leopard, living a solitary,
meal-to-
meal existence, has someone to play with, and the man has someone to
support him while he walks around nude, paints his face and goes
native.

There are domestic tribulations; there are bound to be in any boy-
girl, man-leopard relationship. But after the struggle for survival
that went before, domestic spats seem trivial, even when one of the
partners has fangs.