Three Lives and Only One Death

Raúl Ruiz's 1996 French film is one of Marcello Mastroianni's last roles and a puzzle in which he plays four different characters across four stories: a man who says he was stolen away by fairies, a professor who becomes a tramp, lovers who inherit a chateau, and the final tale that connects everything before it. The characters turn into one another and the viewer never learns which life is real. Ruiz's narrative game is more accessible here: the stories are internally coherent and funny, and only the connection between them is strange. Mastroianni carrying the same weary elegance through all four roles forms the film's centre; his daughter Chiara Mastroianni is also in the cast. The director's baroque manner and odd camera angles keep shifting the sense of reality. Who it's for: viewers who like Raúl Ruiz's cinema, episodic storytelling and late Mastroianni. Who it's not for: anyone wanting narrative resolution, or who will find hunting for the link between the stories wearing.