The Baby of Mâcon

“Exploring thoroughly modern taboos”

In 17th-century Tuscany, a church stages a play for the young aristocrat Cosimo Medici (Jonathan Lacey), in which an old woman gives birth to a beautiful baby boy. The child's older sister (Julia Ormond) sells his blessings and claims to be the true mother, then sets her eye on the Bishop's Son (Ralph Fiennes). Peter Greenaway frames it all as a staged performance, with the audience of the play watching alongside us.