Loosely inspired by Honoré de Balzac's La Comédie humaine, Out 1: Noli me tangere is an absorbing, multi-stranded epic involving a quest to uncover a secret society in post-May 1968 Paris, with an enormous cast made up of French heavyweights like Jean-Pierre Léaud, Juliet Berto and Bernadette Lafont, not to mention cameos from directors like Eric Rohmer and Barbet Schroeder. Constructed as eight feature length episodes which run over almost thirteen hours, it was originally screened just once in its original cut in 1971, with rare subsequent screenings in the ‘90s and ‘00s becoming the stuff of legend in cinema circles.
