The Salamander

Pierre is a journalist working on a series of articles relating Brazilian economics to those in Switzerland. His friend, Paul, is a novelist who works as a house painter to make ends meet. When the financially strapped Pierre pursues a paying assignment from Swiss television to write a script about a shooting incident several years back, he enlists Paul's help to complete everything in the needed one-month time frame. The incident offers some intrigue: a man is shot while cleaning his army rifle. He says his delinquent niece, Rosemonde, shot him, while she claims he accidentally shot himself. The truth is never determined and Rosemonde is not charged. Pierre pursues the assignment like a journalist, reviewing the shooting scene and interviewing the uncle, the niece's former employers and friends, and eventually Rosemonde herself. Paul recreates the incident, applying his imagination alone to construct the details of the plot and the players while continuing at home with his poet wife and young daughter. They plan to work independently and pool their material to create the final script. Uncannily, Paul intuits a lot of the details of events and persons correctly without knowing the facts, while we observe Pierre running the facts down. He develops a relationship with Rosemonde, who enters his life and his bed. Paul meets Rosemonde at Pierre's and also falls under her spell. He concocts a tale in which he appears to tell his wife he has been unfaithful and she responds by quoting a passage from Handke that speaks to a future where people will be free to live and love as they like without hurting each other. Meeting the actual Rosemonde destroys Paul's ability to work on her story, while Pierre has only his notes to fall back on. The deadline passes, they cannot deliver the script, and they have already spent the fee, defraying old debts and helping Rosemonde. Officialdom imposes as an inspector arrives to evaluate the contents of Pierre's apartment since the rent has not been paid for months. Pierre faces poverty and eviction and decides to relocate to Paris while Paul returns to house painting, but their friendship continues strong. We watch Rosemonde defy her petit bourgeois bosses, first leaving her sausage factory job and subsequently getting herself fired from a shoe shop after she is implicated in a burglary there. She walks away smiling into the Christmas shopping crowds. At least for these few minutes, she is free.