This film is not a metaphor for but a metaphorisation of male homosexuality. Use an inverted male gaze to represent the decline of Western civilization.
To be precise, it should be the interpretation of Western civilization based on rationality, form, and principles since the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment. The male protagonist is an embodiment of this spirit. He is a learned professor and artist, and we know from his recollections that he rejects the sensual element in art, and only emphasizes the beauty of form and harmony. But this worldview, especially in the twentieth century, was severely adjusted, especially in World War I and World War II, which can be said to be the bankruptcy of this rational belief.
And the morbid mental state of the male protagonist is just the portrayal of this shaky spirit. So his gaze is very feeble, not the aggressive male gaze in the traditional Hollywood sense. What it shows is the unattainable beauty of a beautiful girl's natural youth. The kind of sensual and embodied beauty is just rejected and ignored by the concept of pure rationality and formal Western civilization.
So homosexuality is a metaphor here, implying not just the rejection and repression of a certain sexuality, but the nostalgia for the entire lost sensuality
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