Rebellious art and the art of rebellion: it's adistinction that Schroeter probably doesn't make. Thus Council of Love(see December 1)-whose poet/playwright protagonist spent his last yearsin an insane asylum-and Day of the Idiots, made the same year, seem toflow in and out of one another. (Indeed, Schroeter interruptedpost-production work on Day of the Idiots to make Council of Love.) InDay of the Idiots, Schroeter explores the hermetic world of the asylum,where an eccentric young misfit, Carole (Carole Bouquet), given toirrational acts that alienate those who love her, lands. Schroeterdepicts the women's ward of the asylum as a Bedlam-like madhouse-or astage for an avant-garde passion play of humanity's deeply wounded; aprison-or a proscenium-where taboo and rebellion wear one another'smasks. The schizophrenia of both inmates and staff allows Schroeter anallegorical framework-we see Ophelia, Mary Stuart, the Catholic farmer'swife, the prostitute, Big Nurse, portraits wrought from all manner ofcliché. As Carole watches from the wings, so are we, theaudience, implicated as voyeurs. "Schroeter's idea of a film,"writes Variety's Ron Holloway, "is to show emotional disorders intheir pristine form." The film becomes a collision of symbols, bothdreamlike and disturbing.