A stately boarding school in Italy. Sunrise and mist. The building seems uninhabited, shuttered and cold. We see two figures awake in the same bed: one is a life-sized doll, the other its all-white masked puppeteer. Others – exactly the same kind of pairing – start their day in the dormitory by putting on clothes. This is daily routine, this requires discipline. The camera follows the Principal Dress, across playtime, soup for lunch, Headmistress inspection, culminating in an ecstatic scene of rupture, rapture and liberating transformation. A girl is born.

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