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When his efforts to quiz his neighbors in the 11th arrondissement of Paris about the forthcoming 1978 elections proved unavailing, since a large number were unwilling to say anything on camera, experimental filmmaker Raul Ruiz first broadened the nature of his documentary to try and discern the effect of the election on a Chilean exile living in Paris. That too proved uninteresting to him, and eventually the film became a commentary not only on the process of filmmaking, but on the ways that ordinary people edit themselves as they speak. Other quirky aspects of communication between people also emerge. At the end of the sixty-minute film, the director reveals that he has merged two separate sixty-minute films into one. Despite having dauntingly intellectual-sounding themes, reviewers applauded the humor and humanity of the resulting movie.