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Les trois couronnes du matelot [Three Crowns of the Sailor] (Raúl Ruiz, 1983)
Jul
25
1958
Prostitute María (Nadège Clair) sitting on her bed. The bed is covered in dolls. DP: Sacha Vierny.
“On the night of July 25, 1958 I killed Ladislaw Zukarevitch, antique dealer, my mentor, my master in the art of polishing diamonds, my tutor at Warsaw Theological School.”
– the student
viewColloque de chiens (1977)
Monique (Silke Humel, R) spending Christmas Eve in a bar, looking for a way out. She's speaking to an elderly man in an expensive tuxedo. Is this it? DP: Denis Lenoir; still photographer Patrice Morere.
December 24: the night before Christmas (Christmas Eve)
Colloque de chiens (Raúl Ruiz, 1977)
“Nobody knows why Monique, the cold and dry voiced whore, bears in her eyes the sadness and tiredness of her past.”
Filmed during an actors' strike, Raúl Ruiz's Colloque de chiens consists for the most part of still photographs with mixed in stolen moving footage of unsuspecting bystanders and stray dogs. Told in fotonovela format, we follow the pitiful account of Monique, who as a young girl, learns that her mother is not who she thinks she is. Rejected, she throws herself into a life of vice until she meets Henri, a handsome young television repairman. Together they buy a small café, and are happy for once. But the cyclical nature of life determines her faith.
Raúl Ruiz's work is, like Henri's modus operandi, determined by maps and patterns. Even in the short comically melodramatic breathe of Colloque de chiens, the map has been laid out for Ruiz's later, much more complex narrative.
Colloque opens in a barren landscape. There are the skeletal towers of a nearby city, and the endless barks of abandoned dogs. Obscured by tall reeds, a blown-up photograph of a young man. The face, soft and familiar, a distant memory.
“He wanted to be returned to the world of his childhood and to this woman who was perhaps waiting for him” –Chris Marker, dialogue from La Jetée (1962)
Amongst bare winter bushes a large photo of a friendly, young, familiar looking man. In the background against a grey sky multiple white apartment buildings.
#Bales2023FilmChallenge #RaúlRuiz #SilkeHumel #EvaSimonet #RobertDarmel #JorgeArriagada #DenisLenoir #PatriceMorere #drama #crime #melodrama #ShortFilm #photography #animals #gender #prostitution #France #1970s ★★★★☆
#todo
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Les trois couronnes du matelot [Three Crowns of the Sailor] (Raúl Ruiz, 1983)
Jun
5
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Les trois couronnes du matelot [Three Crowns of the Sailor] (Raúl Ruiz, 1983)
Jun
4
National Week Of The Ocean
The sailor (Jean-Bernard Guillard) on his ship. DP: Sacha Vierny.
A man murders another and meets a drunk sailor. The drunk then tells the murderer about his life on the sea. Les trois couronnes du matelot is of course never a straightforward crime film. It's Raúl Ruiz, it never is.
“I got nothing out of this crime except the ring he offered me many times; several hundred marks; a collection of old coins, of no value; and a long letter where he advised me to leave the country.”
– the student
The sailor drinks, celebrates and mourns the women and men of his past, we all get drunk on life while the dark water closes itself again above our heads.
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O Território [The Territory] (Raúl Ruiz, 1981)
Apr
2
Nature Day
A man and woman, plus a little girl perched on the man's shoulders, hike through an illusory landscape. DP: Henri Alekan.
Two American families, adults and their children, go on a #HikingTrip somewhere in the south of France. They find themselves increasingly lost, not only in #nature but also in and among themselves.
Supposedly based on a real troublesome event and riddled with much filmmaking adversity, O Território nearly stranded as much as the hikers did. In support, #WimWenders used the same cast for his Der Stand der Dinge (1982), about a film crew's attempt to remake #RogerCorman's Day the World Ended (1955).
In a wonderful, unscripted circular way, Corman was one of the executive producers of Ruiz's film.
