True Films

Jupiter’s Wife


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A sophisticated New York City filmmmaker meets a homeless woman in Central Park, and finds her to be unusually smart, vivacious, and seemingly happy to camp year-round with her dogs. How does she get by with so much enlightened contentment? It’s soon obvious the attractive woman is certifiably crazy, operating on another plane of reality. Voices tell her she is Jupiter’s wife. But rather than flee, as any sane person would do, the filmmaker decides to unravel her story. He does this by taking her irrational claims as coded messages which he learns to interpret from her outrageous clues. He uses his investigative skills in New York to piece together her submerged life, and he then tells the fascinating story she is no longer capable of telling. It is a remarkable achievement. Although he tries to help her, in the end she returns to the park. But the film completely changed my understanding of what the voices say to the afflicted: they are a code that tries to explain. In the middle of the film you’ll want to bail because you are completely focused on someone’s derangements, but its worth hanging through to the conclusion as the filmmaker completes his amazing decipherment.

— KK [recommended by Jonathan Steigman]

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Jupiter's Wife
Directed by Michel Negroponte
1995, 78 min.
$3, Amazon Instant Video rental

Read more about the film at Wikipedia

Rent from Netflix

Available from Amazon

Posted January 1, 2004 at 11:34 am | comments



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