Les Creatures (Les Créatures) (translated)

Written and directed by Agnès Varda, Les Créatures is a 1966 French-Swedish fantasy drama that follows a couple who have just settled in a small town when a car accident changes their lives. Mylène Piccoli (Catherine Deneuve) loses her voice in the crash and can communicate only through writing, while her husband Edgar (Michel Piccoli), a science fiction novelist, draws on the local townspeople for his next book. Gradually the boundaries between his fiction and reality dissolve, as the characters he invents slip from his control and begin leading lives of their own. Strange symbols, eccentric figures, including a talking rabbit, and unconventional color effects give the film a dreamlike, unsettling quality. An official selection of the 27th Venice International Film Festival, the film met with mixed reviews and failed at the box office. Varda later repurposed the leftover film stock to build Ma cabane de l'échec, her so-called shack of failure.