A 42-minute fever dream where shadows breathe and husbands shouldn't read their mail.
In 1743, in the French countryside, a strange epidemic deserted the region. 200 years later, a young woman wakes curiously languid after a restless night. Her husband received a letter a few hours later asking him to go to a remote place for business, where he would have to spend the night. If he succeeds in reassuring his young wife, who has a presentiment of being separated for the first time from him, the first night spent in his host's house will topple everything.
Cinematography
Shadows that move wrong; 1964 film looking centuries old
Acting
Édith Scob's haunted stillness before Eyes Without a Face
Director
Patrice Molinard
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Made during the French New Wave but buried by it—too Gothic, too slow, too female-centered for the Cahiers boys club.
Title references the 1908 animated film: both use flickering, unstable images to suggest reality itself is unreliable.
US
