ARTBOOK V10 · NOVEMBER 2026
Painted plates for RUSSIAN TEATIME, tenth edition: a visual development sketchbook for a court comedy about an almost forgotten spy.
a court comedy of tea and spies
Director's Statement
In a gilded cage in an empress's boudoir sits a parrot whose tongue was cut out for gossiping. It keeps silent for most of the film. I have no such excuse, so let me say briefly what it is about.
Paris, 1755. To overturn Europe's alliances, France slips into Tsarina Elisabeth's court a young lady with a cherub's face and a merciless sword: the Chevalier d'Éon, travelling as Lia de Beaumont. Her “uncle” is Douglas Mackenzie, a surly Scot and geologist who trusts stones rather than people and, in the autumn of his life, falls in love with a woman who does not exist.
The story took thirty years to arrive: from a footnote in Mateiu Caragiale to a drawer, a screenplay, a stage. Only drawing could give it what it lacked: a young man the court takes for a lady, and we very nearly do too; an empress who fills the throne room single-handed; a chancellor buried under his medals; a Death who faints on the cobbles. In animation, exaggeration is the mother tongue.
Beneath the lace lies an old question, lately become new: who decides what you are, you or power? I won't ask you to answer it. I would only like you to laugh in the right places, and to discover on the way home that, at some moment you couldn't name, your heart had tightened a little.
The parrot, meanwhile, is saving its voice for the right moment. Then it sings Handel.
Nae Caranfil
Supertrailer · 90 seconds
ninety seconds of tea, intrigue and snow
ARTBOOK V10 · NOVEMBER 2026
Chapter I
Before the story, six images that hold all of it.
PL. 01 · P001 · THE TSARINA'S BOUDOIR · NIGHT
For a moment the steam from the cup draws a man's profile; Lia blows, and the secret disperses.
the cobalt and gold cup · Elisabeth sees nothing
PL. 02 · HERO I · CONTI'S BOUDOIR · SC. 6
Same face, two outfits: in the mirror, the dragoon officer runs into the young lady he will have to play.
dragoon uniform, 1755 · his hair tied back in a queue
PL. 03 · HERO II · TSARSKOE SELO · NIGHT
Lia curtseys before an empress as big as a throne, with a closed fan her only defence.
night audience · courtiers whisper along the walls
PL. 04 · HERO III · KEY ART
Half officer, half young lady, and all around, in mirror shards, an entire court watching.
poster image, not a still from the film
PL. 05 · HERO IV · LONDON 1810 · SC. 83
London, 1810: the aged d'Éon, who has worn women's clothes for thirty-three years, lifts his skirts, and Death, a few steps away, faints from sheer astonishment.
Adelphi Terrace, stone flags · fitting fog
PL. 06 · P031 · QUAI DES GRANDS-AUGUSTINS · SUNSET
On Douglas's desk at sunset, a rose quartz geode, jagged as a jawbone, a little larger than his palm.
a geode, not a polished stone · the brass magnifying glass
Chapter II
A spy with two faces, an empress with an appetite for life, and a court that whispers behind its fans.
PL. 07 · P002 · CHARACTER SHEET
Charles d'Éon is twenty-six, with a cherub's face, something sly at the corner of the mouth and a sword that has spared no one. He is insolent on principle and seductive by habit. Lia de Beaumont is not a disguise worn out of duty but the great part he has been waiting for: in front of the mirror he rehearses the small step, the sing-song voice, the modestly lowered gaze. One whiff of danger, though, and the swordsman comes bursting out from under the lace.
d'Éon, aged 26 · Lia: same face, different dress
PL. 08 · P003 · CHARACTER SHEET · PARIS
A Scot, a geologist and a member of the Royal Academy of Sciences, Douglas Mackenzie is past fifty-five and trusts stones rather than people. He takes off his round spectacles only to sleep, and his hair has begun to desert the crown of his head. He keeps a Jacobite past in a drawer, where he would prefer it to stay, along with a stiff bearing that slips only twice in the whole film. He tells us the story as it happens, turning to us as to confidants, and it is he who, in the autumn of his life, falls in love with a woman who does not exist.
he takes his spectacles off only to sleep
PL. 09 · P004 · CHARACTER SHEET
Peter the Great's daughter is forty-seven and takes up more room than anyone in any hall of the palace, in every sense. She drinks like a regiment of grenadiers, loves in French and punishes in Russian; she calls herself “the Clement” because she has never signed a death warrant, though she has had a good many tongues cut out. She moves in eruptions, each followed abruptly by a heavy, imperial fatigue. Even in a colonel's uniform and a false moustache, there is no disguising her.
scarlet, gold, ermine
PL. 10 · P005 · ORANIENBAUM · WHITE NIGHT
The Grand Duchess is twenty-five, blonde, with a beauty spot near her mouth; she has the sharpest mind at court and knows it. Married to a husband she regards as a spoilt child, with contempt and weariness in equal measure, she weighs every gesture like a chess player. Told that a coup is being hatched against him, she answers calmly: “I would allow it.” She is the only one who knows d'Éon in both his guises, and she still prefers Lia.
fair without a wig · beauty spot beside the mouth
PL. 11 · P006 · THE ARMOURY
A prince of the blood, a salon poet in public and, in the shadows, master of Louis XV's secret network. He has the long face of a libertine and the ease of a great lord who knows it will be other people's heads on the block. His idea is simple and mad: a letter from the King slipped straight into the Tsarina's boudoir by a woman's hand. Or by the hand of someone who can pass for one.
the compass on St Petersburg
PL. 12 · P007 · CHARACTER SHEET
His Britannic Majesty's ambassador is forty-eight, short, round and ruddy, with a loud good cheer that enters the room before he does. He is not a whit subtler than the pompous phrases he delivers. Between two birds of prey like Bestuzhev and Wolff, his cheerful obliviousness is the English camp's one source of pure comedy. At the ball he comes as Robin Hood, the bow stretched across his belly.
reception at the British Embassy
PL. 13 · P008 · ORANIENBAUM
The heir to the throne is twenty-seven but stopped growing somewhere in childhood: homely, loose-jointed, in a uniform that always looks too big. He carries his lead soldiers around in a box to show them off to guests, and wins his salon duels only because his opponents are paid to lose. He is the most grotesque figure at court and, oddly, the most innocent. History will tip him off the throne after six months, and we shall see him land on his backside.
tin soldiers, the height of a short boot
PL. 14 · P009 · THE CHANCELLERY
The Grand Chancellor is sixty-three, massive, ponderous and plated with decorations, with the bushy eyebrows of a party boss from a later century. He is no operetta villain: he practises villainy methodically, as office routine, and lays his traps without hurrying. He sits as still as a bear lying in wait; only his eyes follow Lia from one end of the hall to the other. London's man, body and soul, he matches the Tsarina glass for glass, down to the last vodka.
Brezhnev's eyebrows · hands without rings
PL. 15 · P032 · BRITISH EMBASSY · WINTER
The British consul is fifty-five, tall and dry, with an earthen complexion and a frown that never leaves him. His hands shake almost all the time: by the time a glass reaches his lips, half of it is gone. The ambassador is England's face in St Petersburg, but Wolff is its brain. When he questions Douglas over a glass of whisky, both men's hands are trembling, for entirely different reasons.
a single candlestick on the desk
PL. 16 · P033 · PETERHOF
The vice-chancellor is forty-two and the French party's discreet friend at court. Powdered, rouged, with a thin moustache and a lace handkerchief he flutters at every line, he has a studied grace rather finer than his coat of arms requires. He sees through the charade at a single glance, having an eye for such things. In the tavern he binds Douglas's bleeding palm with that same handkerchief, and when the noose tightens, it is he who comes up with the idea that saves them.
gestures fully owned · the lace handkerchief
PL. 17 · P034 · THE DUMONET BOARDING HOUSE
The French landlady in St Petersburg is sixty-five and the very model of the kindly old lady, except that she is so dry and so stooped she sometimes looks like the witch from a fairy tale. She keeps the lodging house where Douglas and Lia stay, pours the tea with her own hands and employs a Russian servant, Alyosha, who talks more than he should. The samovar is called Liza, and every now and then it lets out a menacing puff in the direction of the guests.
linen and lace cap · the samovar Liza
PL. 18 · P035 · THE TSARINA'S BOUDOIR · WINTER
The Tsarina's parrot lives in a gilded cage in her boudoir and keeps silent for almost the entire film: she clipped its tongue with scissors because it swore and blabbed the secrets of the alcove. It is green and yellow, grown to the scale of its mistress, with a crest no naturalist would recognise. Elisabeth no longer even notices it. When at last it sings, its neck stretches, its feathers part, and an Adam's apple begins to rise and fall.
first the tongue, then the neck
PL. 19 · P039 · ONE SCENE ONLY
The King of France appears only once, a silhouette in chiaroscuro, and speaks straight to us, like the teller of a prologue. He reads from a letter with the idle irony of a man whom nothing surprises any more. The whole intrigue begins with a sheet of paper bearing his signature.
neutral background · a single candle
PL. 20 · P040 · PETERHOF · WHITE NIGHT
Powdered, rouged and forever behind their fans, Elisabeth's courtiers hear everything and forget nothing. At this court people are sized up at a glance, bought by the piece or packed off to Siberia, and a whisper can do more harm than a sabre. They are drawn as caricatures, after Hogarth, just enough to be ridiculous without ever ceasing to be dangerous.
caricature 7 of 10
PL. 21 · P051 · THE BOUDOIR ANTECHAMBER
Three ladies-in-waiting in wide panniers who marvel, take offence and gossip in unison, like a Greek chorus. They stand guard in the antechamber of the boudoir and know, before anyone else, who goes in and who comes out.
panniers widened at the sides
PL. 22 · P052 · BRITISH EMBASSY · WINTER
Wolff's men: three hooded shadows in identical dark frock coats, who need no faces to frighten anyone. They snatch Douglas in a snowbound street and guard him in the embassy basement. They carry nothing but swords, and Lia will show them what the heels of a pair of slippers are good for.
swords only, no firearms
Chapter III
From the quay on the Seine to the embassy cellar, every room has its own light and its own secret.
PL. 23 · P010 · PARIS 1755 · SUNSET
A low room full of mineral drawers, the Seine lit by the sunset in its window: the small universe of a quiet man.
Quai des Grands-Augustins · the magic hour
PL. 24 · P011 · PETERHOF · JUNE 1755
At midnight the sun barely touches the bay, and the sky bruises over the great cascade.
white nights, no daylight
PL. 25 · P012 · THE ROAD TO RUSSIA
A small carriage, its springs stretched to breaking, racing through the June wheat.
the summer of the road
PL. 26 · P013 · BRITISH EMBASSY · CELLAR
An empty, cold cellar, with windows under the ceiling and an archive cabinet that hides a door.
winter light · a single candlestick
PL. 27 · P014 · PALAIS DE CONTI · NIGHT
Between panoplies of swords, Conti points his compass at Petersburg while young d'Éon leans over the map.
a round working table, not a side table
PL. 28 · P015 · THE INN
Grotesque drinkers, low beams, steam from the wash-tub and a weary carriage at the gate.
Prussia and Poland, June
PL. 29 · P036 · THE BALTIC SEA · WHITE NIGHT
In the nightmare, Lia turns round bearded; when Douglas wakes, the sea is smooth as a mirror.
the storm of the dream · the calm of waking
PL. 30 · P037 · ST PETERSBURG
A warm salon, lit only by candles, where the samovar Liza boils among the lodgers.
candle sconces, no lamps
PL. 31 · P038 · ORANIENBAUM · WHITE NIGHT
A modest summer residence, two storeys, a pond and a single lit window.
the exterior, from the model
PL. 32 · P041 · THE CHANCELLERY · NIGHT
Two seconds of montage: a candle, a seal and a letter not addressed to him.
montage insert
PL. 33 · P042 · PETERHOF · THE MASQUERADE
Hundreds of candles, costumes without masks and, beyond the tall doors, a threatening terrace.
costumes and props, no Venetian masks
PL. 34 · P043 · TSARSKOE SELO · NIGHT
Scarlet and gold, a canopied bed, a cage by the window and a secretaire for secret letters.
the cage by the tall window · Lia's secretaire
PL. 35 · P044 · LONDON 1810
London, 1810: stone flags, a street lamp, fog over the Thames and St Paul's dome melting in the distance.
a promenade of some 120 metres
PL. 36 · P053 · THE BERLINE · SUMMER
Knee to knee, d'Éon and Douglas plot the mission in a carriage too small for two plans.
d'Éon facing the road, Douglas with his back to it
PL. 37 · P054 · ORANIENBAUM · NIGHT
The camera stays in the salon, eyes on a closed door, behind which someone shouts "Cucumber!"
nobody in shot · only a voice
Chapter IV
The white summer of St Petersburg snaps into winter, and the colour feels it before the characters do.
PL. 38 · P016 · COLOUR SCRIPT
From the amber of Paris to the lilac of the white nights, then abruptly into the Prussian blue of winter.
40 panels
PL. 39 · P017 · COLOUR SCRIPT · ACT I
The indigo study, the amber boudoir, dusty roads and the lilac storm on the Baltic.
Paris → Baltic
PL. 40 · P018 · COLOUR SCRIPT · ACT II
The St Petersburg summer: nights that never darken, a ball and a scarlet boudoir.
June 1755, no snow
PL. 41 · P019 · COLOUR SCRIPT · ACT III
After scene 57, the freeze: the blue of the abduction, the sword in candlelight, the fog on the Thames and a single flame.
Sc. 57–84
Chapter V
Eleven moments when the plot turns inside out.
PL. 42 · P045 · PARIS · SUMMER
With his spectacles pushed up on his forehead, Douglas forgets the world over a quartz geode.
summer, sunset light
PL. 43 · P055 · TSARSKOE SELO · WINTER
A snowy night, a false moustache and a sleigh that won't wait.
layout sketch · the sleigh to the Embassy
PL. 44 · P020 · CONTI'S BOUDOIR · SC. 10
The boudoir doors open and Douglas's spectacles slide down his nose: d'Éon has become Lia. He knows the truth from the very first moment, which is exactly why he will be the only one fooled to the end.
Sc. 10 · Lia's first appearance
PL. 45 · P021 · THE POLISH INN
Douglas, red to the tips of his ears, tugs at the corset laces with two fingers while d'Éon watches him in the mirror, amused. It is one of only two moments in the film when the Scot loses his composure.
wig on its block · powder, pins
PL. 46 · P022 · THE BOUDOIR · SC. 36
Lia writes in French what the Empress dictates, while the real letter lies hidden under the cover of Montesquieu.
Sc. 36 · the book with a false bottom
PL. 47 · P056 · THE BOUDOIR · SC. 75
Wigless, a glass of vodka in hand, Elisabeth dictates from bed; Lia writes by a single candle.
frost on the window
PL. 48 · P046 · THE BALLROOM
D'Éon, in his own man's uniform, dances the minuet with Cleopatra, under the scowl of an Athena with Brezhnev's eyebrows.
Bestuzhev in a white toga
PL. 49 · P047 · ST PETERSBURG · SC. 64
A snowy street, a swaying street lamp and three hoods bundling Douglas into a carriage.
staging, to be checked against the screenplay
PL. 50 · P023 · BRITISH EMBASSY · SC. 80
The Tsarina cannot get her sword out of its scabbard; Lia draws it for her and fights with whatever comes to hand, while Elisabeth looks on, astonished and frightened.
Sc. 80 · Wolff flees through the cabinet door
PL. 51 · P024 · SC. 80 AND SC. 82
With the henchmen on the floor, Lia shouts in a man's voice; in the boudoir, Farinelli sings the opening bars and takes flight.
Sc. 80 · Sc. 82
PL. 52 · P048 · SC. 83–84
On the left, 1810: old d'Éon frightens Death; on the right, 1755: Douglas burns his letter.
the last shot returns to 1755
Chapter VI
A uniform, a corset, a book with a false bottom: the disguise is built stitch by stitch.
PL. 53 · P025 · WARDROBE
The red dragoon uniform, front and back, and three gowns for the same face. Lia must pass for a young lady in the eyes of the court, yet the audience should always sense, in the cut of a piece of lace, the ambiguity underneath.
fichu or necklace: we try both
PL. 54 · P026 · WARDROBE
Scarlet brocade and ermine for the throne; a colonel's uniform and a false moustache for the night escapade. However often she changes, Elisabeth remains the same overwhelming apparition, and no garment can hide her.
three mirrors, three guises
PL. 55 · P027 · WARDROBE
The court gown, the gown for the weekly banquet, two outfits for Oranienbaum and Cleopatra's gold. Blonde and beauty-spotted in every guise, so that she can never be mistaken for Lia.
beauty spot in every guise
PL. 56 · P028 · WARDROBE
The travelling coat, the embassy coat, the sultan's turban worn with visible discomfort and the nightshirt of the letter scene. An older, more stooped Douglas, at ease only in the clothes of a man of science.
older, more stooped
PL. 57 · P049 · WARDROBE
The Chancellor's heavy velvet and Athena's white robe, Wolff's black, Conti's silk, Peter's oversized uniform and the Mark Antony helmet that keeps sliding over his eyes.
Athena: white Greek toga
PL. 58 · P057 · PROPS
A thick book with a false bottom, a quartz geode, a cobalt cup, a sealed letter and a candle snuffer. No poison.
no phials, no poison
PL. 59 · P058 · WARDROBE
The chemise, the padded corset, the high fichu and the panniers widened at the sides: this is how an officer becomes a young lady.
panniers widen at the sides
Chapter VII
A ball without masks, a letter that burns, a tsar's shadow on the wall.
PL. 60 · P029 · THE BALLROOM
Cleopatra, Mark Antony with his helmet over his eyes, Athena, Robin Hood, a sheepish sultan and one man dressed as himself.
Elisabeth as Peter the Great — to be confirmed
PL. 61 · P030 · THE DUMONET BOARDING HOUSE · SC. 84
Douglas, barely sober, holds a corner of the letter over the flame; in ten seconds his love is ash. No tears: a lonely man, a candle and a parrot that sings.
Sc. 84 · no tear
PL. 62 · P050 · THE BALLROOM
A single candle throws the tsar's huge shadow on the wall, and the dancers shrink beneath it.
one small flame, one immense shadow