L'Oeil du Paon
2010 · 13m · Belgium
Directed by Gerlando Infuso
Genres: animation, fantasy, horror
A female hunter who has exhausted her usual prey begins stalking a man as an animal, torturing him while falling under his spell, in a twisted gothic tale.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A hunter becomes the hunted, desire inverts into predation, and the whole thing moves with the logic of fever dream rather than plot—this is exactly the kind of premise that makes people uncomfortable because it refuses to resolve itself into something tidy or morally legible.
Infuso positions himself deliberately within the Gothic lineage while working in animation, a medium choice that reads as a conversation with Méliès and contemporary art film; the formal precision required to sustain such tonal ambiguity across 13 minutes reveals a filmmaker in full command of his tradition.
The decision to animate the predator-prey dynamic rather than shoot it live strips away naturalism entirely and forces every gesture, every glance, every movement to carry mythic weight—it's the one choice that makes the twisted romance land as something genuinely unsettling rather than exploitative.
Reviews
Gerlando Infuso a poursuivi dans la voie d'un gothique féminin, et peut-être même féministe... la chasseresse de « L'Oeil du Paon », après avoir épuisé son choix de gibiers, traque un homme comme un animal. Elle le torture tout en étant sensible à ses charmes, dans une relation trouble qui fait écho à celle de « Margot » : l'amour conduit à la destruction.