Mammame

Mammame is the only Ruiz film to be disciplined, rather than merely inspired or informed, by an external structure – a dance performance choreographed by Jean-Claude Gallotta and performed by Gallotta with eight other dancers of the Émile Dubois troupe, four women and four men. The dance is an essentially plotless series of encounters, interactions and collective endeavours among and between the dancers. Ruiz treats the choreography as a found object, translating the material shot by shot and move by move into a dance that can exist only on film. While it becomes impossible at many junctures to imagine what this choreography looked like in its original form – many of the unconventional angles and spatial transitions are unthinkable on stage, and Ruiz eventually shifts the dance to an outdoor location – it remains clear that Gallotta’s choreography has dictated Ruiz’s decisions every step of the way. Thanks to this discipline and structure, Mammame is not only the first incontestable masterpiece by Ruiz, it is also his most accessible work, needing not a single subtitle nor any form of specialised knowledge. It rivals The Red Shoes as the most intoxicating dance film ever made. Ruiz calls it “a film about doubt, fully-fledged doubt”. Jonathan Rosenbaum