The Comedy of Innocence
Shortly after his ninth birthday, Camille, a sweet-but-strange little boy born of haut-bourgeois refinement, begins to insist that his name is Paul and that his elegant mother is in fact not his mother at all, because he has another - across town.
With this as his starting point, Ruiz weaves a stylishly confounding tale of epistemological intrigue, cleverly playing with his characters and interiors to glean as much mystery as possible from this (possibly) supernatural tale. Isabelle Huppert and Jeanne Balibar play Camille's 'mothers'.
Screens with:
Dog's Dialogue
Raúl Ruiz (1977) 22 mins
Phrases from a lurid tale found in a popular crime magazine are recombined to illustrate different events in Ruiz's slyly modernist, César Award-winning short.
