The Doll

Set in an unnamed South American republic, The Doll stages a strange switch of faces and roles inside a brittle regime. A revolutionary impersonator, virtually indistinguishable from the ousted dictator, takes over public duties while the dictator's wife is secretly swapped for an artificial woman. The newcomer tries to bend state rituals toward his own agenda, while the robot wife upends private routines and official spectacle. Small conspiracies, bungled performances and absurd misunderstandings pile up as citizens, officials and foreign observers react in ways that are often funny and sometimes chilling. The film plays like a satirical parable about image, control and the machinery of power.

Directed by Jacques Baratier and based on material by Jacques Audiberti, The Doll arrived in 1962 as an avant-garde mixture of comedy and science fiction, starring Zbigniew Cybulski and Sonne Teal. Its cast also includes Claudio Gora, Catherine Milinaire and Jean Aron, and the film leans into theatrical staging and surreal touches rather than naturalism.

The Doll never became a mainstream box office success, finding most of its audience in art house showings and festival circuits. It had a limited commercial reach outside specialist cinema circles, which kept it more of a curiosity than a hit in its day.

Among cinephiles of 1960s European avant-garde cinema, the film earned a modest cult reputation for its oddball premise and striking visual of a mechanical first lady. That eerie domestic prop and Cybulski's dual performance linger in discussions of political satire on screen, even if the film never entered wide popular culture.

Critical response has been mixed, reflected in a middling average rating. Reviewers tend to praise its satirical ambition and playful staging while noting uneven pacing and an intentionally disorienting tone. The Doll looks at identity, theatricality in politics, and how technology can trivialize intimacy, using absurdist humor and formal inventiveness rather than conventional narrative logic.