An official's earlier rise to power had some sordid aspects that are about to be uncovered by the death of his uncle. While he is trying to contain any potential scandal, the man becomes enamored of the daughter of his uncle's maid. This new romance inspires him to forget worries about a public image and focus on a new life -- not any easy objective when unsavory friends and foes have their own agendas in mind.
When Michel gets the life-sized sex doll he ordered, shipped directly from Japan, he is only intrigued by it at first. Then the silent unresponsiveness of the thing begins to haunt him, and he finds himself reacting to it as if it were an equally unresponsive living woman. As time passes, more and more of his life is spent trying to satisfy or placate its relentless silence, and he goes somewhat mad. He dresses the doll and takes it with him wherever he goes. When his usually very tolerant wife discovers what is going on, her jealousy knows no bounds and she attempts to imitate this threatening love-object. The light-hearted quality of this addle-pated fantasy darkens quickly when various neighborhood men attempt to put the doll to its originally intended use.
This almost 8 hour humongous 1973 documentary by two of the filmmakers who made The Sorrow and the Pity recounts fifty years of the history of France from the 1920s to 1972. It is particularly thorough in documenting the significance and rise to power of Charles De Gaulle. The film's most valuable contributions are its interviews with all sorts of people who lived through this period of history, from Marshall Petain's lawyer (Petain headed the Vichy government of occupied France) to resistance figures, and Frenchmen who fought on the side of the Nazis in Russia.
