The restricted space of the dream, bounded on the left by the clouds, contrasts with the vague space of the palace, on the right, where Mélisse, the confidante, stands in the foreground, extending to the architecture in the background. At the center of the confined space lies Atys, the opera's title role, stretched out on his bed. The restricted space is not reality, but representation, fabricated, elicited here by Cybèle.

Cybèle stands on the edge between vague space (she's not part of the dream) and restricted space (which she conditions).
On the opera stage, the dream clouds were painted on a canvas stretched over a sliding frame. The architecture of the palace on the right corresponds to another "coulisse". A set for every space...

The espace restreint is, in an image representing a scene, the space of the scene itself, the place of the action, which contains the symbolic elements of which the scene is the bearer. A place of the symbolic, the restricted space is opposed to the wave space, which is the place of the real.

The espace restreint is strongly delimited, circumscribed as the theatrical place of representation. This delimitation can be marked by architecture (walls, stage), by objects (curtains, bed skies), by the open presence of characters spectating the scene (visual embrayers) or by the concealed presence of a break-in spectator, watching the central characters without their knowledge.

The delimitation of the restricted space is both material (geometrical) and symbolic: it constitutes the screen.
Within the restricted space, it's not uncommon for characters to adopt hyper-theatricalized gestures: they declaim the speech the image is supposed to represent.