noir

Three Lives and Only One Death Film Difficulty Ranking: 4

Do you want to get lost in reality? Try watching Three Lives and Only One Death. It follows Marcello Mastroianni as a character that spans a few storylines in and around Paris. At times the story lines seem normal, but before long you’ll realise that they are just illusions. See if you can find your way around Raul Ruiz’s world – free to watch here on YouTube.

Why Watch Three Lives and Only One Death?

• If you like your films mysterious (think David Lynch or Ingmar Bergman)
• For Marcello Mastroianni in one of his last roles (the great actor from La Dolce Vita, Divorce: Italian Style, and many more)
• To question your own reality
• You can watch it here on YouTube

The Breakdown

A narrator that looks like a late night news anchor starts the film. As he starts narrating about a man who wakes up because of a baby crying, we see the man he is talking about. The narrator tells us that the man has a headache and goes to the pharmacy, and then, as if controlled by the narrator, the man on screen does the same.

In the pharmacy queue, another man starts talking to our protagonist. It starts off like the normal expected small talk before becoming much more unnerving for our protagonist. This stranger reveals that he knows exactly where this man lives, who he is, and who his wife is. Our protagonist wants to get away from him but the man offers him a lot of money just to sit down and chat with him.

From then on, it gets even weirder. The man reveals that he was the previous husband of our protagonists wife. He tells him he didn’t disappear for 20 years but rather lost 20 years of his time watching these little fairies (yes that wasn’t a typo). He even takes our protagonist into another room to show him these fairies. At this point the camera goes completely red and zooms in and out to disorientate us. Where are we? And what is real? Only the director Raul Ruiz knows!

Conclusion

You’ll experience a lot more of the unnerving world that Raul Ruiz has created if you watch the full film. There’s plenty of things to throw you off. Just like in the great David Lynch and Ingmar Bergman films you’ll be questioning a lot by the end of this film, but it is a great ride!