This last feature starring Marcello Mastroianni, who plays no less than four roles, is a surprisingly accessible and pleasurable film by Ruiz’ standards. This tragi-comic film has three story lines, that follow each other or are interwoven in different ways. Mateo Strano is a representative who returns to his wife Maria after a lengthy absence. George Vickers is a renowned professor of anthropology turned beggar who is in love with the lady Tania. Luc Allamand is an influential businessman imprisoned in a gigantic lie that comes true. Three protagonists who are in fact the same character.Ruiz: ‘The film comprises – in an attempt at structural cubism – different stories with a result that is more than the sum of the parts. I wanted a clear narrative story that, unlike my other films, is easy to follow even if it lacks a linear conclusion.’ Ruiz and co-writer Pascal Bonitzer used stories by Hawthorne and Pirandello that they transformed into a kind of ethnographic document of a summer Paris, even though most of the actors are of foreign origin. Ruiz dressed up his film with playful references to the loss of a cultural and personal identity in a post-Maastricht Europe.
