La Vie est un songe

King Basil read in the stars that his son Sigismund would become a bloodthirsty tyrant. The death of his wife in childbirth confirmed his fears, and he decided to lock up the child from birth and hide his existence. The young man grew up chained in a tower with his tutor Clothalde, unaware of his lineage. Several years later, Rosaure, a young woman seeking revenge for the abandonment of Astolphe, King Basil's nephew, breaks into the tower and discovers Sigismund. At the same time, Basil, wanting to put an end to his reign, decides to give his son a chance: the young man, under the effect of a filter, will fall asleep in his prison and wake up at court. If he behaves correctly, he'll be king; if he's violent and cruel, he'll return to his prison, where he'll be made to believe that it was all a dream. The young man allows himself to be dominated by his impulses. When he wakes up in the tower, the impossibility of distinguishing dream from reality gradually opens the way to a profound reflection on the vanity of men.