REVIEWS
Night Across The Street Reviewed by Jonathan Romney
Raul Ruiz’s epic multi-strander Mysteries Of Lisbon may have been the last major offering from the Chilean-born globe- trotting experimentalist, but Night Across The Street (La Noche De Enfrente) is the farewell film proper from Ruiz, who died last year. It is a whimsical and tender leave-taking note to the world, to cinema and to his native Chile, from which he was exiled for many years. Ruiz, who completed Mysteries despite an illness that
required major surgery, was clearly preoccupied with his mortality while filming, and the film is very much a last tes- tament — yet one of the jolliest-hearted valedictories that cinema has ever produced. Unlike Ruiz’s recent, relatively mainstream work, Night Across The Street is a fluid essay in film as poetry, like his French-made work of the early 1980s (eg, City Of Pirates). Dreamlike a la Cocteau, and altogether free-associative, it is likeliest to appeal to initiates, who will be dewy-eyed over it. Crammed with pleasures as it is, the film is also over-extended, and judicious trimming by editor Valeria Sarmiento (Ruiz’s wife and long-time associate), especially in a slow final stretch, could bring tighter focus. Commercial prospects are slim, but that was never Ruiz’s prime concern, even at his most approachable. Set in contemporary Chile, the film is about an elderly
office worker, Don Celso (Hernandez); as retirement looms, he awaits the mysterious stranger who, he is convinced, is coming to kill him. Don Celso is first encountered attending a poetry class (where adult pupils all sit eyes closed), held by Jean Giono (Vadim), who may or may not be the French nov- elist of the same name (whose Les Ames Fortes Ruiz adapted in 2001). The film cuts between the present and Don Celso’s child-
hood: we see him as a solemn, precociously philosophical boy prone to chatting with Long John Silver and Ludwig van Beethoven, the latter accompanying him to a memorable film screening. Present-day Chile, however, is not evoked in a remotely realistic manner, much of the action taking place in a hotel where characters oscillate between life and death: in one droll twist, the dead hold a seance to contact the living. While this is a very literary film, it is also rapturously vis-
ual, showing Ruiz’s love of trompe l’oeil at its most una- shamedly tricksy, with plentiful use of CGI backdrops. The camerawork is as lithe as ever, and Inti Briones’ photogra- phy is gloriously coloured, especially in the use of warm rose hues and of bronze shades for the seascapes. The many- shaded dialogue takes in elliptical musings, surreal wise- cracks and tart in-jokes about Chile. Playful and wildly imaginative to the last, this film shows Ruiz going out dreaming, and laughing.
DIRECTORS’ FORTNIGHT
Chile-Fr. 2012. 110 mins Director/production designer Raul Ruiz Production companies MargoFilms,Suricato International sales MargoFilms, fmargolin@
yahoo.fr ProducerFrancois Margolin,Christian Aspee Screenplay Raul Ruiz, based on stories by Hernan delSolar CinematographyInti Briones Editor ValeriaSarmiento Music Jorge Arriagada Main castChristian Vadim,SergioHernandez, Valentina Vargas,Chamila Rodriguez
CPH:DOX 1-11 NOV 2012
CPH:FORUMFINANCING FORUM 7-9 NOV 2012
1-11 NOV 2012 TRAINING PROGRAM
INTERNATIONAL F I N A N C I N G F O R U M
May 23, 2012 Screen International at Cannes 13 n
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