The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting

The film opens with a static shot of a street, initially read as a photograph rather than moving imagery. This deliberate stillness sets the work's experimental tone and primes the viewer for a mockumentary approach. As the camera lingers, the imagined documentary voice-over hints at the unfolding investigation.

A disembodied interviewer guides the conversation, while the art collector narrates in first person. The interview segments anchor the narration as the camera glides through a grand 19th-century house and its grounds. The format blurs documentary with fabrication, inviting interpretation and doubt.

The collector reveals six of seven canvases by the fictional painter Fredéric Tonnerre, with the fourth painting conspicuously missing. His whole project hinges on reconstructing that missing work by linking the surviving six. The stakes are aesthetic and epistemic: without the fourth painting, the series' meaning cannot be fully grasped.

The theft becomes the catalyst for an obsessive investigation. He commissions living tableaux to replace the static paintings, testing how meaning travels between works. The search reframes the paintings as living narratives rather than static objects.

In a controlled studio within the house, the collector hires models and assembles props. He rigs lighting and rehearses each tableau vivants, crafting a three-dimensional study of the canvases' themes. The process transforms the paintings into performative scenes that can be circled, lit from multiple angles, and reinterpreted.

Each tableau becomes a vehicle for intertextual storytelling, stitching together myths, historical nods, and fictional plotlines. The collector prescribes movements, positions, and lighting to conjure new meanings from the six surviving canvases. The audience witnesses a meticulous, almost lab-like exploration of what a painting can become when acted.

One tableau reimagines Diana and Actaeon as living figures, allowing viewers to walk around them and feel the tension between desire and danger. The myth is read through the lens of the collection's obsession with transformation and voyeurism. The scene demonstrates how tableaux vivants intensify the painting's presence.

A second tableau stages Knights of the Templar playing chess among a Parisian aristocratic scandal. Lighting and staging turn the game into a metaphor for power, strategy, and social fallings-out. The collector treats the scene as evidence of an overarching narrative thread.

A third tableau suggests an occult ceremony with sacrificial imagery akin to St Sebastian, hinting at an esoteric cult motif. He claims secret codes within the pictures point to Baphomet, while the narrator questions the certainty of such readings. The tension between interpretation and evidence intensifies.

The narrator challenges the collector's pedantic conclusions, insisting that meanings are not fixed by the artist's intentions alone. The collector perseveres, weaving ever more connections between the six scenes. The debate remains unresolved as the investigation presses forward.

Returning through the gallery, the tableaux are entangled and begin to collapse into disorder. Actors blink, stagger, and struggle to hold still as the frames blur with motion and malfunction. The fragility underscores the central question: can a missing painting ever be fully recovered through recreated tableaux?

The collector exits through the back door, leaving the audience inside the gallery as the camera lingers. The living tableaux lie in disarray, and the missing painting remains unsolved, haunting the chain of interpretations. The film ends on an open-ended note, inviting viewers to continue the investigation in their minds.