A woman is trying on clothes, she doesn't know what suits her, she thinks she's found it when obviously, she's totally lost, and vice versa. A man is running through some undergrowth, pushing himself to the limit, convinced that exhaustion and collapse will guarantee that for once, he won't have given up, and that he will have at least "done his best". But he always fails to reach his limit. These two people consult a psychotherapist. His suggestion is to create for each of them a double, where the copy will be responsible for accomplishing all the untapped potential of the original. Thus the patient will no longer have to live with the permanent tension of having to "surpass himself", or even of knowing "deep down" who he is. This procedure engenders a monster.

These poor people take it upon themselves to become what they are not, to set themselves apart, to forget or to remember, and to end up totally confused.

This is a strange play: a process, rigorous and inevitable, a constructivist machine which leads, under the rule of the split personality, to the methodical destruction of itself, swallowing up everything, characters, illusions, story, form, content.

The fable can be turned around in all directions: this is not a satire on psychoanalysis. It is not a speculation in dialogue form on challenge and self-fulfilment, nor is it a moral fable on the powers of language, nor even a Queneau-style comic word-play with rigorous formal constraints, and even less a virtuoso and highly witty metaphysical farce, like those which flourish on the boulevards. Nothing at all like that. It could be a tale of pure fantasy, Hoffmann-style. A beautiful and enigmatic story whose meaning is only attained through its narration, like movement demonstrated by walking. The whole art is to tell the story well. It will probably be thought very moving and funny, this comedy of poor people suffering from themselves.

Denis Podalydès