La présence réelle

When Ruiz was approached in 1983 by the prestigious Avignon Festival to direct a play, his response was twofold. In addition to making at breakneck speed an astonishing film of Racine’s Bérénice, in what he called “the style of a Mexican melodrama”, he undertook an equally ambitious documentary about the Festival. The title of La Presence réelle refers to the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, in which the body and blood of Christ become ‘real’ during the mass. How real, Ruiz wonders, will an actor’s presence be in the interactive video of the future? Extending the delirious paradox of Calderón’s classic Life is a Dream (which Ruiz would produce on stage and adapt as Memoire des apparences in 1986), the actor Franck Oger tries to collect his royalties and visits the theatre festival, during which he becomes the spectator of his own performance. With Grenoble and Le Havre both offering Ruiz production opportunities, his invention reached new heights of ingenuity and fantasy. -Ian Christie