A group of friends listen as one man tells them a story about a time when, in a small cafe, he discovered a peephole into the ladies' bathroom and became addicted to looking through it at female genitals. They ask him questions and come to conclusions about sex. This is a filmed, scripted version. Then, the actual person who this happened to relates the same story; this time, however, it is an unscripted documentary, in which the same things occur as in the scripted one.
Direction
Eustache's structural prank: fiction then documentary, same story.
Writing
Scripted banter vs. real awkwardness — which is more 'true'?
Director
Jean Eustache
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Eustache made this between his masterpieces 'The Mother and the Whore' and 'My Little Loves' — it's his dirty secret sketch, barely distributed outside France.
The 'documentary' subject Jean-Noël Picq was a real critic and Eustache associate; the 'real' story was allegedly true, blurring ethics with structuralist game.
FR
