Pierre Bellemare, a French radio personality appears to recount four strange, seemingly non-coexisting, tales that make up the complex narrative structure of Three Lives and Only One Death.
Andre leaves to a local cafe where he meets one of the multiple enigmatic central characters, Matteo Strano (Marcello Mastroianni).
Matteo insists this apartment is inhabited by fairies who eat time and who ultimately devoured 20 years of his life in one night.
Bellemare then recounts the tale of George Vickers, a 69-year-old bachelor and Professor of "Negative Anthropology" at the Sorbonne.
When Vickers ascends the main stairs at the Sorbonne, to give the opening lecture at a major conference on Negative Anthropology, he pauses and is overcome by a strange force and feeling.
Vickers is ambushed on a routine walk home to an abandoned courtyard, but is saved by a prostitute Tanya La Corse aka Maria Gabri-Colosso.
One day the past catches up with him and he learns Tanya/Maria also lived a double life as the president of a huge electric company, who had been led to prostitution by her husband.
"[5] The young couple receives a mysterious weekly gift of 2,000 francs in their mailbox and proceed with their perfect happy life.
One day the couple doesn't receive their regular earnings in the mailbox, due to the fact that their “protector” has died.
Their inability to recognize Mastroianni as proprietor and butler results in him claiming the couple's new-born child, which he later leaves on Maria's door steps.
Luc receives a surprising phone call, in the middle of the night, detailing the arrival of his ex-wife, daughter and sister.
His begging nearly turns violent, but Maria is able to find a coin in time to reverse Vickers back to Matteo.
Ruiz preferred pursuing “less exhausting aesthetic strategies” to create a more pleasurable viewing experience.
Jonathan Romney, from The Guardian, notes, "with his latest film [Ruiz] has made something that stands every chance of being a commercial success."
Romney's quote emphasizes a shift in Ruiz's cinema that allowed his work to garner more attention.