Total Eclipse is a 1995 erotic historic drama film directed by Agnieszka Holland, based on a 1967 play by Christopher Hampton, who also wrote the screenplay. Based on letters and poems, it presents a historically accurate account of the passionate and violent relationship between 19th-century French poets Arthur Rimbaud (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Paul Verlaine (David Thewlis), at a time of soaring creativity for both men. Warner Bros. has included the film in the catalogue of Warner Archive Collection.

Plot

The older Paul Verlaine meets Arthur Rimbaud's sister, Isabelle, in a café in Paris. Isabelle and her mother want Verlaine to hand over any copies he may still have of Rimbaud's poems so that they can burn them; they fear the lewdness of his writings. Verlaine reflects on the wild relationship he formed with Rimbaud, beginning when the teenaged Rimbaud had sent his poetry to Verlaine from his home in the provinces in 1871. Verlaine, instantly fascinated, impulsively invites him to his rich father-in-law's home in Paris, where he lives with his young, pregnant wife. The wild, eccentric Rimbaud displays no sense of manners or decency whatsoever, scandalising Verlaine's pretentious, bourgeois in-laws.