Jean Genet, who spent his entire adult life in and out of prisons on theft convictions, based his only film, Un Chant d'Amour, on his first novel, Our Lady of the Flowers, which was written from his prison cell during the war. From the private fantasies of a homosexual prisoner in solitary confinement, Genet created a cinematic poem that has been described as "a song of man's love soaring above the sexual ghetto of prison's non-existence" (Cahiers du Cinema). It is a landmark in poetic and erotic cinema.