Writes Antek Walczak: "The opening credits announce a set of false pretenses: a video to mark the centennial of fashion images (1898-1998), sponsored by luxury conglomerate LVMH, and produced by the renowned French film producer Anatole Dauman. What ensues is a delirious collection of sketches, scenes, reports, and fragments glued together with fashion models and held up by voice-over-writing. A babbling narrator on a train ride tries to explain why he is escaping an upstate homestead where everything is falling apart, but before he gets anywhere, he winds up on four different trains running in succession with four different stories. We embark on the voyage with two great American families, Baskin and Robbins, old uptown clans with vast fortunes, bitter hatreds, and headstrong daughters. Crime Punishers, the second story, falls out of the first. It?s a light-hearted look at modern police action. Acapulco Story is the third: a coming of age tale at a holiday resort, with drug traffickers, a fashion show, and plenty of off-screen danger, death, and romance. And finally, a sci-fi alien saga about the siege of our planet in a universe of terror that also recounts the legend of the psychic youth, a report on global economic turmoil, how Mozart is doing in consumer electronics, and Ridiculously Imagined Stories (RIS), a technique where a story-line is improvised off of a list of more or less random words.

Another title for this entire ensemble could be 'Beginnings That Never End,' a joyful celebration of the richness of the first ten minutes of any film, when structures are unfurled, far-fetched schemes laid out on the table, and the exit doors kept thoughtlessly wide open -- where it's possible to enjoy some fresh air before the guiding relentless hand of fictional responsibility takes control and squashes the party."

Bernadette Corporation