Love Torn in a Dream (Raúl Ruiz, 2000)

Curious one this. At the beginning I thought it was absolutely delightful. I loved the way the self-reflexive opening (concerning the actors and film crew) pretends to explain the film to come and its nine interlocking stories, all the while managing to properly confuse the viewer! And yet somehow also provide some genuinely useful information. The film seemed at this point to be the closest any film I can think of has got to the lightly played games of a Calvino combined with the equally playfully deployed learning of an Eco, and yet the transitions between stories are handled with simple but wholly filmic means (montage, superimposition) that mean it's almost impossible to imagine a novel achieving the same texture. The fable-like stories of earnest young Jesuit theologians perplexed by Descartes, mysterious beautiful women and a modern young man who discovers an internet site foretelling what he will do the following day (this last perhaps recalled by the graveyards complete with web addresses in Carax's Holy Motors) seemed perfectly matched to the acting style: played straight enough not to be arch but with the confidence that we all know it's rather silly. And yet as it goes on (and it does go on; I don't think shaving off half an hour or so would have hurt) the balance seems to get lost and it separates into its component parts: the excessively clear (yes, it's about free will and predestination); the merely weird, perhaps hoping that repetition will somehow give the impression of coherence (all those nuns wielding big sticks); the genuinely silly (the dog-headed man); and a rather pretentious earnestness. Possibly a second viewing would generate a different impression but sadly I don't think I'm likely to give it one any time soon.