I want a fairy.

A female one, at any rate. They are small, cute, fully grown and totally naked, and give you an experience second to none.

Well, if we are to believe this film, that is.

The story is loosely based on a real historical event, soon after World War I. Two young girls appeared in photographs with fairies. Coming at a time when spiritualism was all the range, especially given all the people killed in the war, the pictures were considered absolute proof of the supernatural.

No less a person than Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, was convinced of their authenticity, and loudly trumpeted their cause. The pictures were later shown to be fakes, probably made using cut-outs from a child's book about fairies. One give-away was the very up-to-date clothes that the fairies wore. Harry Houdini, the famous magician, at that time heavily involved in debunking spiritualism both in the USA and elsewhere, also got involved in the case. He could not understand how a genius like Conan Doyle could be fooled by such silliness.

Photographing Fairies takes a different look at the subject, one much more suited to Hollywood-type special effects. We follow a young Swiss photographer, an expert in his craft, as he discovers that he is unable to explain how one of the photographs could have been faked. Journeying to the scene of the crime, he tries to get answers from the two girls without success.

Tragedy follows, and he makes no progress until one evening, he discovers the key to the mystery by accident.

The experience changes his life for ever, eventually leading to his premature happy death, as further tragedies dog the story.

Interesting thing about how they created the fairies: the woman are all young and sexy as hell, the men somewhat middle aged with pot bellies and rather ugly features. Everyone was naked. I wonder what the message is?

The performances were fine, direction OK, with the only gripe that the director assumed that showing us a shot of a snow-covered mountain was enough to tell us that we were now back in Switzerland. We have the required sex scene as an indication of what heaven (or whatever) is like. Remarkably tactile, in fact...