User:AnshumanF/Three Lives and Only One Death

Three Lives and Only One Death (Trois vies et une seule mort) is a 1996 French film directed by Raúl Ruiz. It was entered into the 1996 Cannes Film Festival, and was the penultimate film to star Marcello Mastroianni, before his death in 1996.

Synopsis
Sometimes rich man who helps a young couple, Sorbonne professor who becomes homeless or butler, Marcello Mastroianni portrays a character affected by the syndrome of the multiplication of personality. Caught in the vortex of this tale, Mastroianni lives three lives and has three fates who cease to intersect throughout the film.

Plot
Mastroianni first appears as Parisian traveling salesman Mateo Strano who suddenly shows up at a shop near the home of Maria, the wife he abandoned twenty years before. She eventually remarried a man named Andre. Mateo begins telling the skeptical Andre at the shop that he never really left Maria. Instead he was bewitched by fairies and has been living in the apartment across the street the entire time. He seems so serious, that he is able to lure Andre to the alleged apartment. There Mateo murders him with a hammer and then calmly returns to Maria who seems nonplussed by the sudden turn of events. With pride she shows Mateo their adopted daughter. Mastroianni next appears as Sorbonne professor of negative anthropology Georges Vickers, a grown man who still lives with his cranky mother until he inexplicably leaves to become a vagrant. Living on the streets, he encounters Tania, a streetwalker with a passion for the philosophies of author Carlos Castaneda (Don Juan). The hooker and the tramp stay together until the day that Vickers returns and he leaves. It is soon afterward that he discovers that Tania is really the president of a major corporation. When he learns that she has been jailed for attempting to murder her creepy ex-husband, Vickers uses his clout to save her. The story then jumps to a newlywed couple happily struggling in a humble garret. Their lives change dramatically when a benefactor suddenly appears and provides them with a marvelous country house. They are also given a mute butler (Mastroianni) who answers their every beck and call. It doesn't take the couple long to figure out that the sinister valet (who actually owns the chateau) is quietly poisoning them. In terror they leave, but later he finds them and demands that they give him their baby daughter. He gives the child to Maria, Mateo's wife. Mastroianni's fourth persona, that of industrial magnate Luc Alamand then appears. He is in trouble when he learns that the wife, daughter, and sister he manufactured to impress potential clients are actually coming. The stress causes the sudden emergence of his other disparate personalities.

Cast

 * Marcello Mastroianni - Mateo Strano / Georges Vickers / Butler / Luc Allamand
 * Anna Galiena - Maria Gabri-Colosso, "Tania la Corse"
 * Marisa Paredes - María
 * Melvil Poupaud - Martin
 * Chiara Mastroianni - Cecile
 * Arielle Dombasle - Helene
 * Féodor Atkine - Andre
 * Jean-Yves Gautier - Mario
 * Jacques Pieiller - Tania's Husband
 * Pierre Bellemare - Radio Narrator
 * Smaïn - Luca
 * Lou Castel - Bum #1
 * Roland Topor - Bum #2
 * Jacques Delpi - Bum #3
 * Jean Badin - Antoine José