"Rose, this is Paris" "Big mystical serials in thirty-six tableaux and more" "From Bettina Rheims and by Serge Bramly" "Music by Martin Meissonnier" "This is not a film." ""The work must contain nothing of reality, no observation of the world or of minds." "nothing but wholly imaginary combinations."" "Raymond Roussel" "Gone Missing" "Oh my God..." "I got back from my trip with Xavier." "When I entered the apartment the place was in chaos and my sister wasn't there." "I thought she was dead." "I had a hallucination." "MISSING" "Sizeable reward for any information leading to" "Rose Breton. alias Rose Mutt. alias Brigitte Remy. alias Ram Bayglers. etc." "Light hair, eyes likewise." "Known also under the name of Marcelle Souveste." "We are two and we are one." "I don't know..." "She is my soul, she is my mirror, she is..." "I can't live without her." "I can't be without her..." "My sister, Rose." "Room No. 3" "Shattered by Rose's disappearance, her twin sister moved into a family boarding house near the Jardin du Luxembourg, under a false name." "In room No. 3 a famous clairvoyant lived as a recluse." "There was also a Hindu dancer - supposedly a princess - and a philatelist hungry for novelty." "When Rose's spirit was invoked, the table often went wild." "It spinned around chaotically, giving some participants terrible migraines." "Somebody, it seemed, was not telling the whole truth." "Rose had had a husband, and a daughter, whom she had left without explanation, and now she too had to sever all links," "If she was to find her sister again." "Behind the Facade of Ordinary Days" "The days went by, seemingly unchanged." "She was working at the restaurant, passing herself off as her twin sister." "I'm going to have six hands on my head..." "Better six hands from L'Ami Louis than a single hand elsewhere..." "What does that mean?" "In the evening she tried to get the clairvoyant to help her." "And every Saturday she went to a beauty salon where Rose used to go, hoping to find a clue, an idea, something or someone to point her in the right direction." "I've stopped sleeping." "I am waiting." "Observing, searching." "The Ten of Cups, the Fool, the Tower..." "The cards said nothing about Rose." "They avoided the subject as if determined to spare her twin sister, as if they knew a secret with such implications that they feared it would weigh her down," "as if they thought she was unable to bear this burden." "The Insidious Carousel of Memories" "When you told Dr. Alaia your nightmares he turned them into dreams." "Judging by the diary she left behind," "Rose went to see him twice a week, on Monday and Thursday." "She felt like a prisoner of her memory's fixed images." "Her imagination, she complained, always brought back the same old memories:" "The music lesson!" "The death of the bird!" "The game of disguises and false features imposed by her fantasies sometimes drove her to absurd impersonations." "At the fourth stroke it will be 10:23." "At the fourth stroke it will be 10:24." "The Abduction Theory" "It was said that young women sometimes disappeared in fitting rooms." "A man joins them in the cubicle, and then..." "Pfff!" "In such cases, the kidnappers do not demand a ransom, they drug their victim and sell her to the highest bidder." "Sometimes her master locks the poor girl up in a golden cage and shows he off like a pet panther." "Well, it's been a while now..." "Yes, yes, quite..." "We've already spent the whole day together..." "Fascinated by France and by all this opulence..." "Uncivilised creatures that you are!" "All Europe came to the brothels of Paris." "Sometimes she is subjected to vile practices and the woman gradually loses even the taste for her past life." "Did Rose still remember that she had a twin sister?" "The Dissolution Theory" "A young woman matching the description of Rose had been spotted on the boulevards." "Spread the word: a rich reward for whoever gives her address." "Perhaps Rose had locked herself into a dissolute life of her own free will and no longer wished to leave it." "The possibility could not be lightly dismissed." "Rose, as if I were you, melted together in one single desire." "Welcome to the cabaret of the last day!" "For a while, she was a dancer in a cabaret." "When she got up on stage, and the spotlights lit up and the music started, she felt she was nearing her goal." "And there you go!" "She learnt the tricks of the trade from the other girls:" "how to prance on a chair, how to fake an orgasm with a flick of the hair." "The Conspiracy Theory" "The smoke of revolution had attracted Rose ever since she was little." "She dreamed of blowing up the world and making it new." "Terrorists could easily have recruited her." "Like all idealists, she was credulous." "Some fugitives said they were guided by an apparition when they felt lost." "People murmured that this was the ghost of the court clerk, a compassionate spirit who haunted the maze of archives." "Maybe she had fallen in love with the right boy?" "Maybe she was addicted to the higher emotions induced by the dangers of clandestinely?" "Maybe..." "The Thwarted-Love Theory" "Some days, when the sky was stormy and the streets cold and damp, it seemed to her that Rose had been dragged into a spiral of false feelings that kept her from the light of true life." "Rose!" "Where are you, Rose?" "Come to me, Rose!" "It's you I'm waiting for, Rose!" "I am an image again." "She was fed with chimera, deceitful hopes stifled her will, contradictory desires muddied her thoughts." "Often, when a feeling persists, it turns bitter, like venom." "You lose sight of your interests, forget your friends, reject your family." "There were so many possibilities." "How could one tell?" "Who to believe?" "What track to follow?" "Rose is death, she said to herself." "Rose is death." "The Flower Girl Gang Theory" "Reserved for books out of use." "The gang grew roses in the basements of the abandoned great library." "Just a few drops of blood could poison the flowers, making their petals go black." "When the smell of those roses spread through the streets it wrought havoc." "Innocent children, unaware no doubt that their wares were harmful, hawked their toxic flowers in all the bars and cafes." "The Bride Theory" "Their patents, she recalled, had brought them up with the idea of a perfect wedding: in white, with chiming bells and eternal oaths." "Rose told anyone who would listen that she understood her obligations and would make it a point of honour to obey them." "Timid power, essence of love, constant sparks:" "the virgin reaches the limit of her desire." "And, at the same time, she dreams of something else that she cannot name." "In fact, Rose was spoilt for choice." "The number of would-be lovers grew in proportion to her hesitation." "There were three of them, then six, then nine." "The situation was especially embarrassing for Rose didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings." "And so she thought of marriage as a high wire up above the void, or an infernal machine running riot among the unknowing crowd one festive night." "The Oracle" "Signs were multiplying - obvious, insistent, almost limpid." "Was the quest reaching its end?" "R.O.S.E." "Every night the oracle under its glass dome doggedly repeated the four letters of the mystery, like a message of deliverance." "Madame Jacquot was an authority." "Her bench in the Parisian Metro was like her throne." "She knew the city inside out." "I wonder if I'll recognise her..." "It's her!" "She listened to your story and, if she judged you worthy, she gave you a little scrap of paper with an address on it." "Here, she said, this is where you'll get your sister back." "I feel like kissing..." "R.O.S.E." "Thursday, 12 March 2009." "At the 4th stroke it will be 10:23." "This time she felt someone was waiting for her." "This is a strange feeling after such a long, solitary journey in the dark." "She still had to beg, but she knew now that she was going to see, just as she was seen." "A light was shining." "She couldn't recognise herself." ""This is not me", she said." "But Rose was smiling at her, and she thought:" ""This is still me."" "In searching and finding herself in this way, she felt she had understood something that went far beyond the aspirations of love." "The Mourning of Illusions" "A breach was opening in the wall, and on the ruins of a dying world a desire, an ambition, an appetite she thought lost was coming back to life." "Like Orpheus she must leave the world of shades without looking back." "Eurydice was gone." "She had invented, rocked, fed and sustained her with her own flesh." "It was time to loosen the grip of her ghosts." "Then, at last, the true flower could bloom." "The Reconciliation of Opposing Squares" " Hello, Rose?" "Are you okay?" " Yes, great, and you?" "I'm dying to get out and about!" "I'm so happy!" "The voice whispering in her ear had gone quiet, giving her a respite, a gap between two questions, two distractions." "Who is one speaking to, she now asked herself, who is one speaking to when one is talking to oneself?" "So sorry!" "She no longer saw the crime, no longer felt the guilt." "Her remorse had vanished, replaced, so to speak, by a hazy shadow of regret." "Can you lend me some money, please?" "Here, I'll lend you 600." "300..." "At last she could join the game, alongside the others, and play with them, as if nothing had happened, at all those games from which she had so long felt excluded, and that she wanted so badly to play." "Me, bet again?" "600." "I'll raise you." "150!" "Raise!" "5000!" "Quick, go on!" "One million!" "One million!" "This is no fun!" "The women always win!"