Character Relationship Map: My Case

Characters

• Actrice n° 1 (played by Bulle Ogier) — protagonist
• L'Employé (played by Axel Bogousslavsky) — protagonist
• L'Intrus (played by Luís Miguel Cintra) — supporting
• L'Auteur (played by Fred Personne) — supporting
• Le spectateur (played by Wladimir Ivanovsky) — supporting
• Le projectionniste (played by Grégoire Oestermann) — supporting
• Voix-off (played by Henri Serre) — minor
• Actrice nº 1 (played by Teresa Madruga) — minor

Canonical Relationships

Family, romantic, and professional connections based on plot evidence.

• L'Employé → L'Auteur (Professional Assistant-Creator) — Employee supports the author's work
• Le projectionniste → Le spectateur (Professional Projectionist-Audience) — Projectionist presents film to the spectator
• L'Auteur → Actrice nº 1 (Professional Director-Actor) — Author directs Teresa Madruga in the play
• L'Auteur → Actrice n° 1 (Professional Director-Actor) — Author directs Bulle Ogier in the play
• Actrice n° 1 → Actrice nº 1 (Meta Same Role Different Actors) — Two different actresses embody the same character

Story Dynamics

Alliances, conflicts, and narrative interactions that evolve throughout the story.

• Le spectateur → Actrice n° 1 (Social Observer-Performer) — Spectator witnesses the actress's suffering
• L'Intrus → Actrice n° 1 (Conflict Disruptor-Performer) — Intrus interrupts the actress's performance
• L'Intrus → L'Auteur (Conflict Disruptor-Creator) — Intrus challenges the author's authority
• Voix-off → Actrice n° 1 (Narrative Narrator-Character) — Voice-over comments on the actress's performance
• Voix-off → L'Auteur (Narrative Narrator-Creator) — Voice-over interprets the author's work

Story Analysis

A three-stage formal experiment transforms repeated comic material into a parable about suffering and the difficulty of empathy.

Plot Progression

1. Theatrical Beginnings — The film opens with a play and establishes its material through theatrical performance. A recurring joke first appears within this stage-based form.
2. Silence and Beckett — The second stage shifts toward a silent-film treatment. Behind-the-scenes readings from Beckett works accompany the visual material.
3. The Joke Repeated — The same joke is repeated three times, with each repetition sounding fresh. Its comic pattern gradually develops into a larger dramatic and symbolic structure.
4. Job and Human Misery — The final avant-garde treatment reworks the same material and brings out its near-verbatim relationship to the Book of Job. The resulting parable examines the difficulty of empathizing with other peop...