Synopsis
Twilight of the Ice Nymphs is the dream-struck fantasia of Peter Glahn, a political prisoner returning after several hard years of incarceration, to his homeland of Mandragora where the sun never sets. While traveling by boat, he spends a few precious minutes in the enticing and rarefied company of Juliana (Pascale Bussières), a beauteous young woman with whom he falls desperately and immediately in love. He disembarks to find a veritable ronde of romance brewing in the smouldering passions of sun addled Mandragora: his ostrich-farming sister Amelia (Shelley Duvall) is sick with heartache for the mesmerist Dr. Solti (R.H. Thomson), who with a greedy and voluminous passion, seeks the favours of both Zephyr (Alice Krige), a fishermans widow now married to the forest, and the statue of Venus recently uncovered and mounted imperiously on a hilltop. Zephyr gives herself to Peter upon his arrival, but he can think of no other than Juliana and her strange connection to the haughty Dr. Solti. Amelia, driven to distraction by her unrequited passion for the Doctor as well as by the unwelcome attentions and misguided vengeance of her handyman, Cain Ball (Frank Gorshin), loses her reason and spirals into homicidal madness, gravely injuring Cain. Peter is also maddened by his unrequited love for Juliana and the way in which it is constantly thwarted by the wily Doctor, and so the story goes
