Memorable, crazy movie

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

This is the first part of Ruiz's wonderful shot-on-DV film-essay COFRALANDES, CHILEAN RHAPSODY (aka IMPRESSIONS OF CHILE). As with many of his "no-budget" efforts, it inhabits an odd twilit zone of its own where sudden sojourns into the worlds of fiction and documentary begin and end without warning. There is a nominal plot setup involving a Frenchman, a German, an Englishman and a Chilean but, interspersed with Ruiz's trademark absurdist sketches (only some of which he had to devise), we also have talking heads reflecting on Chile's national character, language, literature, landscape and all manner of minutiae of yesteryear. The more you know about Chilean culture, however, the less surreal all this seems – and the more playful, droll and melancholic it becomes. I would recommend Cofralandes ("the land of plenty") to anyone interested in exploring Chilean national identity or the potential of digital video. The director's fans should also see it – for this is definitely Ruiz at his most radical. A possible influence on Godard's FILM SOCIALISME.