The Public Woman

Ethel (Valérie Kaprisky), a young actress with almost no experience, wants her first real part, and she gets it in a film based on Dostoyevsky's *The Possessed*. The director, Lucas Kessling (Francis Huster), a Czech immigrant working in Paris, starts taking over her life outside the set. Żuławski shoots it at a feverish pitch, and the line between the role and the woman playing it keeps slipping.