Writer of O

When Histoire d’O was published in 1954, it caused a great stir. The sadomasochistic story, about a woman who submits herself to a long series of erotic humiliations to please her lover, shocked France. The book became a national bestseller and in the sixties it was the French novel that sold most copies. But who was the author? Who was hiding behind the pseudonym Pauline Réage? For a long time, suspicion fastened on the well-known writer Jean Paulhan, who had written the foreword to the novel. After all, no woman could write a book like that. Only in 1994 did Paulhan's love, the journalist and essayist Dominique Aury, reveal herself as the author. She had written the book as a love letter to Paulhan. Director Pola Rapaport secretly read the scandalous novel when she was thirteen. “Reading it felt like being burned in a fire.” Now, she speaks with the author, who was born in 1907 and vigilantly defends her work. Rapaport also talks with a few people involved, including Aury’s publisher at the time. The director combines her own interviews with excerpts from older interviews with Aury and photographs. In addition, actors enact both scenes from the novel, with a voiceover that recites the text, and moments from the life of Paulhan and Aury.