The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting

Raúl Ruiz's 1978 film came out of a documentary commission from French television; instead of making a documentary about the writer and painter Pierre Klossowski, Ruiz wrote a fiction with him. In the film a collector tries to explain the paintings of an imaginary nineteenth-century artist. The paintings themselves are never shown; each is instead reconstructed as a three-dimensional living tableau using real people, and the collector walks among them as he talks. A second narrator, heard but never seen, objects to him. One painting in the series has been stolen, and the missing piece leaves the whole interpretation unresolved. The result is a film of thought in which meaning is deferred indefinitely. Sacha Vierny shot it. Who it's for: viewers who like experimental cinema, art theory and games with narration. Who it's not for: anyone looking for story and character; the film is an argument from beginning to end.