"Narrative syndrome;" "Mnemosyne;" "Truth is absorbed through the eyes."

I haven't seen many of the large number of Ruiz films. But I have seen some on both sides of this in terms of engagement.

You should know that these are first essays on the nature of reality and fiction in fiction. Only as a second matter are muscle and concurrent elaboration added. Ruiz isn't interested to go as far as, say "2001" (or for that matter "2046") in taking the armature of narrative shuffling and make us care.

So, as a friend says, you can see the plumbing. In fact, it is little but plumbing, more like "The Hyposthesis of the Stolen painting" where every element was there only to drive the metanarrative with the narrative itself almost mute.

Not so in "Comedy of Innocence" or "Time Regained" where he makes the narrative obvious. With the former, we actually care about Huppert's character. Here, the central character is a Go board, where (if you watch closely) the patterns of what surrounds what change in subtle ways. This is the partner in a sense to "Hero" which is cast as a game of Go in the rain. But we forget.

If you choose to see this, dear friends, choose to approach it as an exposition, elaboration or fold on one of your favorite already layered projects. Because though it has a Latin engine, it wears a French straitjacket.

The notion here is that the story captures the person and changes her, not the other way around. So if you want to know anyone, you need to know the genealogy of their story. In watching this, the characters are attached to stories, not to bodies. So several characters have more than one body and the other way around.

Every single woman in the thing is one woman: all are redheads except the second being of Deneuve's making, who only differs in being blond. She (the blond) is our designated detective. The film merges with paintings, tableaux, games, courtships, therapies, rituals, and at least one ancient campfire tale.

For me, this was the other side of the warring narrators in "2001" with which I suggest you view it.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.