What if you fell in love with a ghost you invented from a photo booth?
Jean, the lead character in this psychological journey is torn by a search for his lost childhood, the overwhelming need to love a woman of his dreams (someone he has invented), and a struggle with his latent bisexuality. Jean finds some photos inside an automatic photo station that look like his mother who died soon after he was born. He starts to fantasize about the woman, giving her a name and identity and waiting for her to appear. During this time, he meets Carole and has an affair with her, all the while pretending he has this other relationship with the woman in the photo. Significantly, the couple who introduce him to Carole is childless, and they eventually split up - perhaps a comment on the importance of childhood to the adult world. In the end, Carole discovers that Jean's "other woman" has no real existence, causing a crisis that finds a symbolic expression as the last scenes close on the story.
Acting
Arestrup's haunted, withholding performance
Cinematography
Hazy, memory-soaked imagery of desire and absence
Direction
Reusser's fearless plunge into psychic fragmentation
Director
Francis Reusser
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Francis Reusser was a Swiss documentarian making a rare fiction film, which explains the uncanny observational quality.
Released in 1981, this quietly queer film predates mainstream cinema's engagement with bisexual male identity by decades.
US
