A possible explanation(s)...

I was going to write my thoughts about the "war between sexes" and how she was aiming to escape, or process her coming of age but found a better explanation... (see way below for the link/cut and paste)


(I did want to add)

I think there was something Victorian, a passing/outdated mindset, or matronly about the old woman. Seems she was something allegorical, like ending of WWII era, or radio era ending etc... That might explain the suckling and trying to pull the energy from youth...

Also, the snake at the end when she's in bed seems pretty sexual. Also her reaching out to the radio with no results, makes me think whatever the old woman represents died or is outmoded. The unicorn was said in other posts to be a "sentient being", all knowing or elevated. That would make sense if the old woman passed into the infinite.

I did see another post that suggests Brother Lily and Sister Lily are the duality within her, or that they were like her "young adult" minds. They seem to prepare to separate from the children/Eden with make up, and the Wagner singers are going to replace them Logan's Run style.

The man kills the eagle in a masculine show, and the woman is outraged at the brutality, then they fight/split/fall out of harmony into the war.

I didn't see the war as being more than a frame. It wasn't "real" to me in any way, except that it was constantly looming out there. I'm not sure how I'd read it during 1975. Seemed more of a personal story to Lily...

That's all I got. Just a stab. Interesting movie. I got more out of it than Valerie and Her Week of Wonders which felt stylistically similar.


Here's the better synopsis:

http://alchetron.com/Black-Moon-(1975-film)-15230-W

Walking a fine line between fantasy and reality with the two occasionally merging, Black Moon refuses to conform to a conventional storyline and a description of the fantastical events that take place could easily give one the wrong impression and misrepresent the cinematic experience Malle intended. The director was well aware of this, saying "I dont know how to describe Black Moon because its a strange melange - if you want, its a mythological fairy-tale taking place in the near future. There are several themes; one is the ultimate civil war...the war between men and women. I say the ultimate civil war, because through the 1970s wed been watching all this fighting between people of different religions and races and political beliefs. And this was, of course, the climax and great moment of womens liberation. So, we follow a young girl, in this civil war; shes trying to escape, and in the middle of the wood she finds a house which seems to be abandoned. When she enters the house, she obviously enters another world; shes in the presence of an old lady in bed, who speaks a strange language and converses with a huge rat on her bedside table. She goes from discovery to discovery - its a sort of initiation." The film has obvious connections to the writings of Lewis Carroll as well as other films from the same period such as Robert Altmans Images (1972), which shares a similar fascination with unicorns, and Ingmar Bergmans bleak war allegory, Shame (1968). Malle freely admitted that Black Moon "conveys my admiration for and curiosity about Alice in Wonderland. And in the part I deliberately cast this English girl, Cathryn Harrison..."