The Public Woman

In "The Public Woman," an untested actress accepts a role in a Dostoyevsky adaptation, only to find her life consumed by the film's director, a Czech expatriate in Paris with a penchant for blurring fiction and reality. As the actress loses herself in his manipulative orbit, she becomes enmeshed in a dangerous charade, impersonating the deceased wife of another immigrant to facilitate a political murder, illustrating the filmmaker's insidious control and the actress's descent into complicity.