Raúl Ruiz makes uncertainty entertaining, with shifting identities, stories within stories and a welcome sense of humour. We recommend his puzzles with one reservation: the complications can outlast the pleasure of following them.
Fi1m perspective
Marcello Mastroianni takes four roles in Three Lives and Only One Death (1996) and makes the strangeness seem almost routine. Around him, Raúl Ruiz moves between comedy, crime, fantasy and mystery, without settling how seriously each should be taken. We laughed at how little fuss Mastroianni makes of the strangeness. This is the Ruiz we recommend: peculiar, funny and able to make us curious without making us feel we are sitting an examination.
His Chilean debut, Three Sad Tigers (1968), was followed by a prolific stretch in the 1970s and 1980s, much of it funded by television. On The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting (1978), he worked with cinematographer Sacha Vierny. Across Ruiz’s work, mirrors, extreme angles and deep focus give us several things to look at within a frame. The stories can be just as restless, with one tale interrupting another and identities refusing to stay fixed.
The move towards international casts in the 1990s did not mean an end to those habits. Three Lives and Only One Death made them approachable through Mastroianni; Time Regained (1999) set Ruiz the task of adapting Proust. Mastroianni gives us someone worth watching even when we cannot decide what sort of film we are in. Ruiz leaves him room to be funny rather than making the performance serve only the puzzle.
There are limits to our appetite for the complications. Writing Three Lives and Only One Death with Pascal Bonitzer, Ruiz invites us to hunt for connections as though watching a crime film, then allows fantasy to make that attention seem slightly foolish. It is an enjoyable uncertainty, but 123 minutes gives the complications more attention than they earn. We would happily lose some of those detours. Start with Mastroianni if a comic puzzle appeals, and allow a little patience for the detours.
Biography
Raúl Ruiz (also credited as Raoul Ruiz) was a Chilean filmmaker, writer and teacher. Born in Puerto Montt, Chile, on 25 July 1941, he studied law and theology before turning to theatre and film. After the 1973 military coup he went into exile in Paris, where he worked extensively and became best known.
Ruiz directed more than 100 films, often experimental or literary in character. His credits include directing and co-writing Three Lives and Only One Death (1996) and directing Time Regained (1999), an adaptation of Proust. Other notable works are The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting (1978), City of Pirates (1984) and Three Crowns of the Sailor (1983). He died in Paris on 19 August 2011.
