War of the Gardens (1982)

"Raul Ruiz filmed the gardens of the Château de Versailles. The first one, French, focuses on the King's Square (a space where everything is arranged in order to be seen). The other one, English, is the exact opposite, because from any point within it, one falls out of view. Within these two constructions, the labyrinth and the concentric circles, Ruiz conceives a 'photo-roman' plot: a husband and his mistress rendez-vous in the English garden (one understands why) and, through a series of accidents and afraid of being seen, he relocates to the other garden. There he runs into his wife who is with her own lover, into the ex-husband of his wife who is with his new mistress, and into the new lover of his ex-wife.... We never see this husband. It's the camera that creates the fiction. It oscillates between the desire of being at the center of the scene, well in view and filming (viewing) without being seen. In Ruiz, when the camera "marries" the point of view of a character many "divorces" come into perspective. Between the two elements ('les deux lieux (communs)'), between the picture (the gardens of Versailles) and the plot (the voice-over), the camera is the object and the subject of continuous quarrels."
- Charles Tesson (Cahiers du Cinema 333 - March 1982)