Manuel on the Island of Wonders

Episode 2

Le Pique-nique des rêves

Part Two (the status of which is at first confusing since it begins after the three mini-narratives of the first Part and before the end of Episode One) is entitled ‘The Picnic of Dreams’. Whilst vaguely ‘keeping to the storyline’, it veers off in many different directions, where the thematic coupling ordinary/special replaces the familiar/unknown dualism of Part One. (Each Part is guided by a thematic ‘dominant’, a pair of notions that tend to exchange their meanings as it progresses.)

Episode 3

La Petite Championne d'échecs

Part Three (beginning in Episode Two), entitled ‘The Little Chess-Champion’, hands the (until now) off-screen voice-over narration to Manoel himself. He promises to tell his own story, but adds that it’s ‘a story that I made up in my distant childhood and that happens in the future’. The tone is less Baroque, more Gothic, as Ruiz explores the ‘wonders of the night’. The filmmaker’s obsession in this section concerns perception and the deciphering of secret signs and codes.