Where to watch Recital (1978) in the UK

Recital (1978) is not currently listed on any UK streaming, rental, or purchase service. Last verified on 19 September 2026 by ScreenSearch.

Inspired by Simone De Beauvoir's writings Stephanie Beroes' film Recital addresses the state of 'woman in love', a situation fraught less with ecstasy than with risk and pain. Recital is a highly structured film. Each section involves a woman, situated in some external local, reading a letter or other text. It is clear that the women are not the authors of what they read. The first text is a letter expressing the pain of unrequited love, the abyss of frustrated passion, however read in a monotone with no peaks of feeling. This pattern of love letter reading is repeated with several other readers: one breaks up laughing when she comes to a passage: 'Oh, yes, I love you, I love you.' Clearly the subject is not one of true comedy, particularly since the letters recited are ones Beroes once earnestly composed. Beroes' goal, however, is a kind of distanced deconstruction of the experience, in an attempt to view it with the lessons of knowledge and time.

• Film
• 1978
• 20 min