This experimental French film was originally made in a 12-hour-long version. The release version is only four-and-a-half hours long. It concerns a young man who pretends to be deaf and dumb in order to beg for money and begins to get letters which make him think that a conspiracy, hitherto known only in the stories by Honoré de Balzac called "the thirteen," is true.
~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide