Morel's Invention

A fugitive comes ashore on an island he takes to be uninhabited. There is an abandoned mansion on it, a chapel and a swimming pool. After a while people appear; they walk about in old-fashioned clothes, talk and dance, and they do not see him. He calls to them, passes in front of them, gets no reaction at all. Then the same week, the same conversations and the same movements begin to repeat. The source is Adolfo Bioy Casares's novel of 1940, one of the most cited books in Spanish-language fantastic literature; Borges, in his prologue to it, called the book perfect. Emidio Greco's adaptation does not try to explain the novel, and it withholds from the viewer for a long time the thing the man does not understand. There is almost no dialogue; the narrative is built on looking and on repetition. Anna Karina plays the woman he watches from a distance. The same idea has turned up in a great many films and series since.