L'hypothèse du tableau volé

Ruiz makes the state of exile the starting point for an erudite, highly ironic study of the difference between filmic and pictorial rules of representation which leaves one wondering until well into the middle whether he might not, after all, be serious. This parody of tasteful French art connoisseurship leads, on playful, labyrinthine paths, straight to the moral?philosophical tales of Rohmer or Rivette. A very literary meditation on the subject of parallel worlds, of messages disguising themselves as accidents and coincidences revealing the hand of fate, Hypothesis pays tribute to Borges, Calvino and the paranoid histories of Thomas Pynchon. But, like Eco's The Name of the Rose, it is also a detective story.The clues, pointing to a conspiracy and cover?up 'out there' in the world of history shape themselves into an allegory of 'in here', of reading and the mind's need for sense?making. The conspiracy is that of the sign, which can overturn one's hold on the real, simply by opening up a gap and positing a missing link. The film can be enjoyed as a sophisticated play with the narrative possibilities contained in static images, the stories that linger within or at the edges of a visual representation. -Thomas Elsaesser