the house: amidst the jealous conniving of women of the house over the attentions of the widower, a young child is mysteriously murdered. But this narrative is one that repeats like a stage play, with exact phrases they soon learn well enough to start joking about. Each time they repeat eating the candy, they remember more of the day's events. Just as if reading a favorite novel, or again watching a beloved movie, they find that they can enter the narrative itself, with each twist and turn memorized. Far from being the passive viewers/readers that they were at first—and most movie viewers always are—the women come to realize that they can seize hold of the story, changing it as they wish. Now, even as the plot continues to unfold in its clockwork fashion, the women begin to take control, making it "interactive" by adding alterations to their dialogues and inserting different actions into the events unreeling in the house. Finally, in a true act of authorship, they change the ending, and rescue the young girl who was originally murdered. Both realities are fully conjoined when, after their rescue of the girl from the House of Fiction, the two not only discover themselves transported back to Julie's apartment, but this time it isn't another "waking dream" for the young girl, Madlyn, has joined them, safely back in 1970s Paris. To relax, Céline, Julie, and Madlyn take a rowboat on a placid river, rowing and gliding happily along. But something isn't quite right. They go silent upon seeing another boat quickly coming to pass them on the water. On that boat we see the three main protagonists from the house-of-another-time: that alternate reality has followed them back to their world. But Céline, Julie, and Madlyn see them as the antique props they are, frozen in place. The film ends as we watch Céline this time, half nodding off on a park bench, who catches sight of Julie hurrying past her, who in her White Rabbit way, drops her magic book. Picking it up, she calls and runs after Julie. Themes Magic is one of the themes of the film. Céline, the stage magician, does her magic tricks in a nightclub performance. Magic seems to come too from Julie's Tarot card readings. Finally, "real" magic comes from the design of a potion, which enables both women to enter the house and take charge