A dream within a dream, a play within a play, Jacques Levitt's farthest work in film form. The two strangers, Celine the magician and Julie the librarian, are impressive in their game-like chase at the beginning of the film and the way they meet. The relationship between the two in the first half of the film is presented by pasting clips, even if it is continuous in time, but due to the skipping of clips and the omission of information, the audience has a feeling similar to peeping. After Celine and Julie lived together, they became friends. It's hard to tell the love between them. Celine will ask Julie's boyfriend out and talk intimately. She will dance with Julie's boyfriend in the open air and then take off Julie's boyfriend's pants to play pranks. Celine will go to the library where Julie works to read, and Julie will go to the theater where Celine works to watch Celine perform magic. They share their lives and secrets, and stay close. Until Julie accidentally entered a haunted house and lost her memory, the film began to enter a surreal state. Every time you enter the haunted house, you lose your memory, and every time you eat candy that can evoke memory fragments. The two watch clips from the haunted house like the audience, with Celine and Julie becoming the peeps, and the audience the peeps behind the peeps. As each candy effect wears off, the audience returns to reality with the pair as first-tier peeps. There are four people living in the haunted house, a daughter, parents and an aunt. And Celine and Julie turn into nurses in the haunted house to take care of their daughter every time they eat candy. The daughter was seriously ill because the aunt always poisoned her daughter's food through needles. If the daughter dies, the parents will divorce, and the aunt likes the brother-in-law, which is the result she wants to see. And parents don't seem to be too sad about their daughters, which looks more like a middle-class family with apathy. The memories Celine and Julie watch every time they eat candy are fragmentary, repetitive, and fleeting. While watching the clip, they joked and mocked the words and deeds of the owner of the haunted house. The screen keeps switching back and forth between memory fragments and reality, always reminding the audience that they are the peeps on the second floor. In the end, Celine and Julie entered the haunted house and rescued their daughter. At the end of the film, Celine wakes up sitting on the open-air bench where Julie sat at the beginning of the film, when Julie passes by and drops a book on the ground, Celine immediately picks up the book and chases after her. It turned out that everything was Celine's dream, and at the beginning of the film Julie chased Celine and it became Celine chases Julie at the end. Could this be another Jolie's dream?
The film is filled with layers of voyeurism from start to finish. Julie chases Celine and stands downstairs with Celine watching and peeping. Celine sneaks into the library where Julie works and peeks. Julie peeps when she watches Celine's magic. Two people's peeps on the haunted house, the audience's peeps on the two, and the audience's peeps on the haunted house. When Julie went to the theater to perform magic in place of Celine, she said to the audience: You are all voyeurs. I think that's what Levitt wanted to say to the audience of this movie as well. Such a peculiar movie-watching experience, good or bad, is unforgettable.
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