Total Eclipse is a 1995 erotic historical drama film directed by Agnieszka Holland,[3] based on a 1967 play by Christopher Hampton, who also adapted it for the screen.

Based on letters and poems, it presents a historically accurate account of the relationship between 19th-century French poets Arthur Rimbaud (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Paul Verlaine (David Thewlis).

The staid respectability of married life and easy, middle-class surroundings had been stifling Verlaine's admittedly sybaritic literary talent.

A violent, itinerant relationship ensues between the two poets, the climax of which arrives in Brussels when a drunken and enraged Verlaine shoots Rimbaud and is sentenced a fine and two years in prison for sodomy and grievous bodily harm.

Bitterly renouncing literature in any form, Rimbaud travels the world alone, finally settling in Abyssinia (modern day Ethiopia) to run a "trading post".

During her conversation with Verlaine, Isabelle Rimbaud asserts that her brother had accepted confession from a priest right before he died, showing Christian penitence, which is why only the censored versions of his poetry should survive.